223 NOTES ON PISH and fishing. 



will "top" this — but seldom. I once "assisted" in 

 the capture of one which scaled 4 J lbs. 1 landed it for 

 a brother angler ; and if an angler, who is generally the 

 incarnation of all amiable graces and virtues, can feel envy, 

 I felt it then, though, as I had enjoyed the best of the 

 jack-fishing that day, I had the hypocrisy to say that I 

 was glad he had caught it, and not myself. I felt, how- 

 ever, I should be pardoned the " pious fraud." The 

 aforesaid 4^-pounder, like many other good fish, fell into 

 the hands of Cooper, of Eadnor Street, St. Luke's, for 

 perservation, not like Australian meat, but in a glass case 

 where he still lives; but an ugly monster (here crops up 

 my envy again), as all large perch are, being all belly ; 

 and, like all large perch, as I intimated before, bereft of a 

 great deal of his chromatic beauty. This fish is, I believe, 

 still at the offices of Mr. T. S. Haviside, 69, Cornhill. 



It was taken in the water at , where I enjoyed the very 



fair day's jack-fishing recorded in the last Note. At the 

 hotel at Slapton Lea, a perch caught in the water there is 

 figured (or at least was some years ago) on the wall of 

 the bar-parlour in chalk, his weight, as far as I remember 

 being indicated as 6 lbs. — a veritable percidal monster, 

 and a notable capture from the Lea, where the fish, owing 

 probably to their countless hosts, run small. Tarrell 

 records a perch taken from the Serpentine which weighed 

 9 lbs., and Pennant another of 8 lbs. But these weights are 

 far distanced by those of the perch of Scandinavia and other 

 northern climes, as also by those of the Danube. Pew 

 English perch attain 2 lbs. — very few 3 lbs. — still fewer 

 4 lbs. I doubt whether half-a-dozen perch are taken in the 

 United Kingdom in the year which scale the latter weight. 

 In the Thames a 2 lb. fish is a good fish, a 3 lb. fish a better, 



