PERCH-FISHING. 251 



conscience felt by anglers on the score of the sufferings sup- 

 posed to be inflicted on their captives. 



This incident appears on the face of it so very much like one 

 of the flights of fancy of Baron Munchausen, that were it not 

 that it took place in the presence of not less than half-a-dozen 

 witnesses I should have hesitated to mention it. Singularly 

 enough, one-eyed perch actually exist, are, I mean, bred with 

 this deformity in several British waters. Mr. Stoddart, in his 

 ' Angler's Rambles,' mentions that he himself caught a large 

 number of perch having only one eye in Dunse Castle loch. 

 ' On one of the four or five occasions,' says Mr. Stoddart, ' on 

 which I fished here, I took out three dozen of perch exactly 

 one half of which wanted an eye. How to account for such 

 a contingency in so large a proportion remains to me a 

 puzzle. The Rev. W. Crouder, of Dunse, was along with me 

 at the same time and met with a similar experience. On 

 a subsequent occasion in the same pond among four or five 

 scores of perch taken I could only discover a single one-eyed 

 specimen.' 



With most of us, in fiction as well as in fact, one-eyed perch 

 figure. We must all remember in Lord Lytton's charming 

 romance ' My Novel,' how the half-starved Dr. Riccabocca 

 fished daily for his one-eyed perch, although the novelist does 

 not, if I remember rightly, crown his perseverance with eventual 

 success. 



An account of some totally blind perch andhow they become 

 so is given by Thomas Hurtley, in his description of the natural 

 curiosities in the environs of Malham, near Craven, Yorkshire. 

 The perch of Malham water, it appears, after a certain age 

 become blind. A hard yellov?' film covers the whole surface of 

 the eye, when the fish gradually acquires a black hue, yet these 

 perch frequently attain the weight of 5 lbs., and are only to be 

 taken with a net that sweeps the bottom, where they feed on 

 loaches, miller's thumbs, &c. 



Perch seem to be specially favoured in the matter of de- 

 formities, and Sir John Richardson has given us an interesting 



