THE PERCH. 227 



Of all British fishes perhaps the perch is the most 

 widely distributed, hardly a river or bit of still water 

 being without his presence. 



To refer again for a moment to the allegation that jack 

 do not take perch. In my last Note, I bore personal 

 testimony to the fact that a perch with his back fin cut 

 off is almost the only bait used in Slapton Lea, and that 

 the jack there take it greedily, and they must depend 

 on perch more or less for their living. Moreover, I 

 argued that if jack were as astute as they are said to be, 

 they ought to know that the spines of the perch would 

 not hurt them, as they would fold backwards when the 

 fish was swallowed head foremost. Still I admit that a 

 perch, generally speaking, either with or without his 

 spinous back fin, is not a taking bait for a jack. Perhaps 

 he does not like the thick skin and very closely set scales 

 offered. Even the crocodile of the Nile, as Dr. Badham 

 informs us, is said to eschew the Nile perch ; and cer- 

 tainly the prickly lophoderm of the perch is, to the eye 

 at least, suggestive of caution. The old Saxons repre- 

 sented one of their gods standing with naked feet on 

 the back of a perch, "as an emblem of patience in 

 adversity and constancy in trial." The whole question 

 of a difficult mouthful to swallow depends on how to 

 accommodate it for deglutition. A donkey swallows 

 a thistle (or at least he should do so) artistically, i. e. 

 spikes upwards, the thistle folding up innocuously as he 

 swallows it. A man can swallow a fork if he begins 

 with the handle first. Why, then, should a jack make 

 such a fuss about pouching a perch ? 



In answer to the question, to what size will an English 

 perch attain, I answer four pounds. Occasionally they 



Q 2 



