ON THE BEST KINDS OF FISH FOE EITEES. 153 



parent incongruities, the whitebait has been left to its 

 own affiliation, and is unmolested, save by the nets- 

 men, being declared by TarreU to be a separate 

 fish. Some would-be-thought gourmands assert that 

 the fry of other fish, or even minnows, if the same 

 amount of pains were bestowed upon them, would be 

 equally delicious. I greatly doubt this ; nay, I utterly 

 repudiate it, and refuse to believe it. In matters of 

 this especial kind I am inclined to think that what- 

 ever is is. For example, turtle-soup is, and the man 

 who says that mock-turtle is equally good is (not a 

 judge, at any rate). The nearest thing as a delicacy 

 to whitebait is a dish of a very smaE. bleak.^ They 

 are delicious ; nay, the larger bleak, cooked in the 

 way that sprats are cooked, form an excellent dish, 

 and are scarcely inferior to gudgeon. Having acci- 

 dentally passed over the bleak, I iucidentaUy mention 

 it here. It is a fish too weU known, though of too 

 small importance, to need any great space for descrip- 

 tion ; and, as it is very much of a surface-feeding fish, 

 it takes little from the other fish, and it affords an 

 admirable source of food to the more predatory fish 

 also, as the pike, perch, and trout ; and these do feed 



■ I should have added above, that the bleak also for a time 

 straggled for the houour of paternity to the whitebait, but was 

 soon put out of court, 



