CYPEINID^ OE, CARPS. 285 



not only on tte banks of the Seine, but also on the 

 Loire, Sa6ne, Rhone, and indeed on most of the prin- 

 cipal rivers of France. The wholesale destruction of 

 these Lilliputian leucisci was carried on unremittingly 

 for a number of years, but a new fish was at length disco- 

 vered in the Tiber, which left the bleak of the Seine ia 

 comparative peace and security ; and E,om.an pearls, as 

 they were henceforth called, being found vastly superior 

 to those hitherto manufactured ia Paris or anywhere else 

 in France, soon drove all other unionist competitors 

 completely out of the market. These pearls continue, 

 to the present day, unrivalled in the soft lustre of their 

 light ; possessing an advantage even over the real oyster 

 pearl in that they are not liable, like it, to change colour. 



The argentiua, or Tiber pearl-fish, is strikingly like 

 the atherine or sea smelt, but difiers from it in having 

 one prickly and one soft back fin, whereas the sea smelt 

 has two spinous dorsals. Both these fish are distin- 

 guishable from the true smelt by the absence of that fra- 

 grant cucumber smeU which belongs exclusively to it. 



Immense shoals of argentine are consumed annually 

 in this commerce, and as their range scarcely extends 

 beyond the embouchure of the Tiber, it seems wonderful 

 that the little creatures should not long ago have met 

 with the fate of beavers and great whales, and been di- 

 minished and brought low, if not wholly exterminated ; 

 but this is by no means the case, their supply seems in- 

 exhaustible ; year after year the same enormous quanti- 

 ties, first deprived of the swim-bladder, are sold to the 



ten thousand pearls were issued every week : for so large a de- 

 mand an incalculable number of fisb must have been put to the 

 strigil : it has been calculated that for every single pound of 

 ' scales four thousand bleak are immolated, and a pound of scales 

 yields only four ounces of pearly precipitate, which makes the 

 process something like that of melting down an ox for a pint of 

 strong essence of beef. 



