338 NOTES ON FISH AND FISHING. 



He was " as yellow as a guinea/' or a Gyprinus auratus, 

 from head to tail. 



In none of the books I have read on fishes and angling 

 do I remember having seen any notice of the minnow 

 gastronomically, nor do I know any person except myself 

 (including my family) who has eaten minnows. I came 

 to do so in this wise. Some winters ago, during very 

 hard, frosty weather, I was crossing a narrow wooden 

 bridge over one of the many streams which flow through 

 that " land of rivers of waters " about Harmondsworth 

 and Colnbrook, in Middlesex, when I noticed a black- 

 looking mass of minnows, tens of thousands in number, 

 lying behind one of the supports of the bridge, huddled 

 together so as actually to be touching one another. It 

 might be suggested that they had thus packed themselves 

 for the sake of warmth; but how any number of 

 cold-blooded animals would get warmer by contiguity, 

 I do not know. My first thought, like that of any other 

 human savage, was how to capture them, and the second 

 action of my mind was the determination to capture them 

 and convert them into " whitebait." I went home at 

 once, and got a landing-net of small mesh enough to hold 

 these little fish, and, drawing it up sharply behind them, 

 I landed literally a hatful. My cook did her best to 

 cook them, frying them, of course, in batter, and my 

 family and self to eat them ; and the general verdict was 

 that they were an excellent substitute for real whitebait, 

 the fried batter, with the lemon and cayenne and the con- 

 comitant brown bread and butter, making, as they do with 

 whitebait, an agreeable combination. It is quite worth 

 while to deal with a hatful of these little Leucisci in this 

 fashion when you can get one as easily as I did. 



