74 BRITISH SPORTING FISHES. 
many of the water-birds reject them. In an 
extemporised aquarium half-a-dozen loach are 
swimming before me. With the light full upon 
them they seem but little inclined to come from 
among their sheltering gravel, though now and 
again one of them takes a turn round the little 
world of waters to see what it can pick up. 
These little hermits are pugnacious enough, and 
show desperate fight when one offers to invade 
the domain of its neighbour. The most striking 
characteristic of the fish are six barbules about 
the mouth, which make them resemble barbels 
in miniature. These testify to the fact of their 
living at the bottom of streams, and using the 
mouth as a sucker in search of food. These 
barbules give the loach its popular name of 
“beardie”; it is also known as eelie and 
eel-roach. A close cousin to the loach, and 
the only other British fish of the same genera, 
is the spined-loach or grounding, a much rarer 
species than the foregoing, and less widely dis- 
tributed. Like most fishes the loach has the 
power to take on itself the colour of the stream 
which it haunts, and those before me are greenish 
brown, spotted and clouded with darker brown, 
and beneath pale, yellowish white. The irides. 
are blue ; a medial line runs along the body; and 
the tail is beautifully barred. Such a delicacy is 
