8 NOTES ON PISH AND FISHING. 



Florida Abbey, and by otters as an attempt on the part 

 of the poor captives to utter their complaints in the Welsh 

 language. We have, too — or perhaps I had better say we 

 had, if an old writer is to be credited — " fish without fins" 

 in Lough Loman, and one-eyed fish in some of the Carnar- 

 vonshire lakes, and a peculiar " blue roach " is to be found 

 in a pond on the Dartford marshes in Kent. I know we 

 have blind fish, for I have seen them ; but then they had 

 for a long time been excluded from daylight in an under- 

 ground reservoir of one of the London Water Companies, 

 which shall be nameless. 



We probably also have some veritable Hybrids, crosses 

 between carp and roach, and bream and roach, but I will 

 not commit myself on this point, as I believe that most 

 English naturalists hold that there is no such thing as a 

 hybrid among fish. Continental naturalists, on the other 

 hand, maintain that hybrids do exist, and point to a fish 

 which is found in the fresh waters of Eastern Europe, and 

 appears to be an intermediate between the common perch 

 and the pike-perch (Lucioperca) ; and also among sea-fish 

 to the intermediate between the two most common kinds 

 of sea-perch, and to the hybrids between the plaice and 

 the flounder. Professor von Siebold of Munich, a great 

 authority, in his Fresh-water Fishes of Central Europe, 

 names no less than five hybrids connected with the Cypri- 

 nidce family; one between the common and the Crucian 

 carp, another between the bream and some white fish 

 (Leuciscus), a third between the bream and roach, a fourth 

 between the bleak and German chub, which is closely 

 allied to our chub, and the fifth between two fish of the 

 Cyprinidce family, but unknown in our waters. Some 

 years ago experiments by the Rev. Augustus Morgan, of 



