340 NOTES ON FISH AND PISHING. 



bat," and " tiddlers " is an abbreviated form. I 

 must confess for many years to have had a very 

 hazy perception of the difference between these two little 

 fish ; indeed, I am under the impression that for some 

 time at least I thought they were one and the same fish. 

 But now I " know a hawk from a hernshaw " (hand-saw) , 

 and a minnow from a stickleback, and I am happy. For 

 the benefit of any of my readers — if I may pay them the 

 bad compliment of supposing there is even one among 

 them whose views are not quite clear as to the all- 

 important and soul-engrossing difference between these 

 two leviathans of our waters — let me say that, in the first 

 place, they belong to two entirely distinct classes of fish, 

 the minnow being a carp, as I have before observed, and 

 so a member of the extensive family of the Malacopterygii, 

 or " soft-finned " fish, while the stickleback belongs to 

 the ichthyological section of the Acanthopterygii, or 

 spinous-finned fish. The group, or sub -family, which 

 claims our stickleback is the Gurnard group, a member of 

 which is a common object on our fishmongers' slabs, and 

 is reputed to contain poison in his head. The gurnard 

 group is characterized by " sharp projecting cheeks, and 

 cuboid heads cased in cuirasses of bony plates;" but this 

 feature does not come out very strongly in our little 

 friend, though there can be no doubt about his being a 

 gurnard. Linnaeus assigns him to the genus of Gas- 

 terostei, which, being interpreted, signifies " bony-sided " 

 or " bony-bellied." In a rough way, it may be translated 

 "armour-plated." There are salt-water as well as fresh- 

 water Gasterostei, and naturalists discriminate between no 

 less than six kinds of sticklebacks in our ponds and rivers. 

 I believe the commonest in our waters is the "rough- 



