214 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [vox. 48 
account of the original uses of the names and of the fishes to which 
they were given may be,welcome. 
The chub, roach, dace, rudd, ide and minnow of Europe are quite 
closely related to each other and by some ichthyologists are united 
in a single genus (Leuciscus), although by others they are isolated 
in as many genera as there are names. 
The Cuups, or cheven(Leuciscus cephalus), is a rather large and 
thick-headed fish with the dorsal fin somewhat arched and not emar- 
ginated as in most of its congeners. Its average length is less than 
a foot, though sometimes much greater; its weight about a pound. 
It is a restless fish which “lives almost entirely near the surface of 
the water’; it is because it does so, according to Carbonnier, that 
it does not contract that taste of mud which characterizes fish which 
live at the bottom,” and consequently of all the European Cyprinids 
it is by him esteemed to be “ one of the best for eating.” ‘ In most 
hot days,’ according to Izaak Walton, “ you will find a dozen or 
twenty chevens floating near the top of the water.” It was this 
habit that enabled “ Piscator” to see the biggest of the school of 
chubs when he had approached the brook with Venator and to 
identify it by the “ bruise upon his tail ” which looked “ like a white 
spot’; it was caught, it will be remembered, as Piscator promised, 
and Venator had received his first lesson. 
The chub is unique in bearing a name which is entirely isolated 
from all by which the fish is known in other lands. Its etymology 
and history are quite obscure, although much attention and specu- 
lation have been spent on it, and its earliest known recorded use 
is in the celebrated Book of St. Albans (1496). It evidently is con- 
nected with the same word which has given us “ chubby ” and has 
reference to the form of the fish and especially its head. 
The chub, besides being the first fish which Piscator Walton 
taught his pupil Venator to catch, was also an object lesson as to 
how it might be so managed that, though by some “ reckoned to 
be the worst of fish,” it might be made “a good fish by dressing it.” 
The chub has been claimed by a recent writer (Buckland) to be 
“remarkable for his hawk-like quickness of sight; even the shadow 
of the rod or a passing cloud will make him sink instantly.” Yet 
Piscator selected it for his first lesson in angling because he thought 
“there is no fish better to enter a young angler, he is so easily 
caught.”’ The Frenchman’s opinion as to the chub’s sapidity also 
may be contrasted with that voiced by “ Venator ” and half endorsed 
by “ Piscator.” “A chub is the worst fish that swims,” expostu- 
lated “ Venator,” and only by cooking could the fact be disguised 
