224 NOTES ON PISH AND PISHLNG. 



some and beautiful. His symmetry is perfection, and in 

 this respect I hardly know a fish I admire more. He is 

 resplendent with colour, both in harmony and contrast. 

 The dark transverse bars zebra-wise striping his pale- 

 shaded green body, his beautifully- arranged scales, the 

 bright vermilion of his anal and caudal fins, the golden 

 irides of his eyes, and his white belly make a picture which 

 perfectly fills the ichthyologically admiring eye. When 

 looked down upon in clear still water he looks transparent, 

 the dark bars causing the illusion. And this reminds me 

 of many happy summer days on Slapton Lea, when I have 

 watched from over the boat's side the shoals of perch be- 

 neath me as countless as in Windermere, and admired 

 their transparent beauty till I thought it almost a sin to 

 attempt to ensnare them. It is a pity that the older a 

 perch gets the more he loses both his beauty of shape 

 and colour; but this is more or less the way of all flesh 

 and fish. 



Dr. Badham mentions several ichthyological peculiari- 

 ties of the perch ; there are one or two specially worthy 

 of record. All perch, he notes, open the mouth wide 

 when taken out of the water, and die with open gills ; 

 and hence one of the family, conspicuous for the first- 

 named peculiarity, was called by the Greeks " Channe," 

 or the " Gaper." And in connexion with this gaping 

 propensity it is noticed that the perch gapes most when 

 most hungry, and actually " brings his stomach up into 

 his mouth, as an angry camel is said to do." Galen has 

 ingeniously explained this strange stomachic Orexis (if 

 I may thus describe it), saying that " as famished per- 

 sons stretch forth their hands to snatch at victuals, so 

 the stomach of this fish protrudes the gullet for the same 



