CATALOGUE OF FISHES. 331 



Salmonida?, or Trout family, truly indigenous, and the most 

 valued of river fishes. The Esocida), or Pike family, of which 

 that voracious tyrant the Pike is the well-known British repre- 

 sentative, a colonist that could well have been spared from our 

 lakes and streams. The Sea-Pikes or Garfishes, Scomhresocidce, 

 including the Flying-fishes of tropical seas, are of no great com- 

 mercial value, and are perhaps the best representatives of the 

 pelagic type of fishes that visit our shores. The Herring family, 

 Clupeidcc, belong also to this group, the only member of which 

 the Common Herring is next to the White fish (Cod, Haddock, 

 and Ling) the most valuable of the fishes that swarm annually 

 upon our coast, affording the cheapest kind of food in a fresh 

 or dried state that can be procured ; and its fry, the Sprat, is a 

 delicious food, which, though abounding in winter at the mouths 

 of most of the estuaries of our larger rivers, seems to be almost 

 neglected as an article of food; and what are caught by the 

 fishermen are generally sold for manure or bait, and the rest are 

 left in the sea for gannets, gulls, and fishes to regale themselves 

 on. There seems to be a culpable neglect on some parts of the 

 English coast of the valuable supply of food which is provided 

 in such abundance, but remains unused, a few miles only or less 

 from our own shore. The Eel family, Murcenidce, though so 

 widely different in habit and shape to the preceding, are ranged 

 in the same group. The Conger, a fish of great commercial value 

 on the South Coast, is rare in the North Sea, and not much 

 prized when caught ; and as for the Freshwater Eel, it seems to 

 be thought too uncanny a fish either to be caught or eaten, and 

 only a few persons in the North who have overcome the pre- 

 judices against it are able to enjoy an epicurean dish of stewed 

 eels for breakfast. It should be remembered that in the streams 

 further south hundreds of persons obtain a competent livelihood 

 by the capture of eels alone, and epicures have in all ages at- 

 tested, in the most conclusive manner possible, to the culinary 

 qualities of this locally-despised fish. But it should be added 

 that the eel, though common enough in Northumberland, is by 

 no means so abundant as further south, and besides when crawl- 

 ing among the grass it has a very " Atthery-like " look. The 



