THE MINNOW — THE STICKLEBACK. 83 7 



men, but we cannot forget the interest we took in min- 

 nows when we were boys. There was a time when, to 

 use the words of Oowper in his Retirement, — 



" To snare the mole, or with ill-fashion'd hook 

 To draw th' incautious minnow from the brook, 

 Were life's prime pleasures in our simple view." 



Minnows were probably the first fish we ever caught. 

 And how triumphantly we used to carry them home in an 

 old medicine-bottle, which afterwards answered as a small 

 aquarium, till the poor little captives died, perhaps out 

 of sheer wonderment why their native element became so 

 hard to their lips at a given point which they could not 

 distinguish with their eyes ! As long as boys and min- 

 nows exist, there will be an irresistible attraction between 

 the two, not indeed exactly mutual, but of the former to 

 the latter ; though in a certain sense, too, of the latter to 

 the former, for, as I often notice on the banks of the Ser- 

 pentine and round pond in Kensington Garden, the little 

 fish cannot resist the scraps of worms offered them by 

 the young urchins who persist in fishing these forbidden 

 waters, even with the fear of the Royal Ranger, police, 

 and park-keepers before their eyes. A curious fact in 

 the natural history of minnows is that they devour their 

 own dead — at least Dr. Badham says so — and I suppose 

 he means literally and immediately, and not in the sense 

 in which we are said to eat our ancestors, when we eat 

 the " muttons " which have grazed the herbage on their 

 graves. 



A few months ago I saw at the shop of Mr. Holroyd, 

 59, Gracechurch Street, a golden minnow, which had been 

 caught at the mouth of the Gadd, near Rickmondsworth. 



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