76 BRITISH SPORTING FISHES. 
waterside often find that they have caught a 
veritable tartar when they pounce upon the 
bullhead; and Frank Buckland tells us that he 
once received a little Grebe (Podeceps minor) 
choked by a miller’s-thumb. “The fish,” he 
says, “was so firmly fixed in the bird’s mouth 
that I found it would go neither backwards nor 
forwards, so I could neither press it down the 
cesophagus nor pull it out altogether. Mr. Grebe 
evidently was not aware that the miller’s- 
thumb was armed with two very sharp spikes 
on each side of the gill-cover, and when the 
fish found himself in trouble, he simply expanded 
these spines, which fixed him so firmly in the 
bird’s mouth that it died from suffocation. I 
have had two or three specimens sent me of 
Kingfishers destroyed by bullheads sticking in 
their throats.” It is worthy of remark that the 
presence of spines in a species becomes perfectly 
well known to the larger predatory fishes, and 
although trout will take the bullhead dead, eels 
are the only fish which can manage it alive. 
The silvery Minnow is one of the prettiest 
and most widely distributed of British fresh-water 
fishes. It belongs to the Cyfrinide, being the 
tiniest of the fish of the carp kind, and not the least 
beautiful. “The pink,” Walton tells us, ““makes 
a dainty dish of meat,” and to make a “ minnow- 
