CYPEINIDJ]; OK CARPS. 277 



compromising the taste or reputation of him who eats it. 

 It has even found partisans : 



Pull many a fair partrich. had liee on mewe, 

 And many a brome, and many a luce in stewe, 



says Chaucer. Walton also speaks well of it; Cuvier 

 concedes it to be a moderately good fish ; but his coun- 

 trymen^ going beyond him, have this proverb, 'Qui a 

 breme peut bramer ses amis' (who has bream in the 

 pond may ask friends to his table) . There are even con- 

 noisseurs who have recommended with equal confidence 

 ' a carp's head, a bream's middle, and a pike's tail :' we 

 should be content with the first and last cuts, and be 

 careful to eschew the ' juste milieu,' for the whole fish is 

 insipid and full of spines : — 



The flabby solids fill'd with treacherous bones 



is a line we borrow from Ausonius, as correctly describ- 

 ing the bream, which, if it be eaten at all, should be 

 eaten as soon as caught, 



Nee duraturus post bina trihoria mensis. 



Cypkinus Cobites (Loach). 



The word Cobites, which occurs in Athenseus, has been 

 borrowed and made use of by modern ichthyologists, 

 as the scientific designation for loach; a fish which, 

 though it must have fallen occasionally under the eye of 

 those Romans who kept stews and stock-ponds, was pro- 

 bably, like the last, deemed too worthless a pisciculus to 

 have a name, and was left anonymous in consequence. 

 Hicesius describes indeed an ancient cobites as ' a small 

 light-coloured fish, and covered with mucus,' points 

 wherein it wdl certainly bear a comparison with its mo- 

 dem namesake the loach, which, as Walton says, ' grow- 

 eth not to be above a finger long, and is no thicker than 

 is suitable to that length ;' but then he adds, it is ' of 



