248 Fish Stories 



but it runs on a wide bed, which it will need in flood-time, 

 when the snow melts in the mountains. And this broad 

 flood-bed is filled with gravel, with straggling willows, showy 

 day-lilies, orange amaryllis and the little sky-blue spider 

 flower, which the Japanese call chocho, or butterfly-weed. 



In the Tamagawa are many fishes : shining minnows in the 

 white ripples, dark catfishes in the pools and eddies, and little 

 sculpins and gobies lurking under the stones. Trout dart 

 through its upper waters, and at times salmon run up from 

 the sea. 



But the one fish of all its fishes is the ayu. This is a 

 sort of dwarf salmon, running in the spring and spawning 

 in the rivers just as a salmon does. But it is smaller than 

 any salmon, not larger than a smelt, and its flesh is white 

 and tender, and so very delicate in its taste and odor that 

 one who tastes it crisply fried or boiled feels that he has 

 never tasted real fish before. In all its anatomy the ayu 

 is a salmon, a dwarf of its kind, one which our ancestors 

 in England would have called a "samlet." Its scientific 

 name is Plecoglossus altivelis. Plecoglossus means plaited 

 tongue, and altivelis, having a high sail ; for the skin of the 

 tongue is plaited or folded in a curious way, and the dorsal 

 fin is higher than that of the salmon, and one poetically 

 inclined might, if he liked, call it a sail. The teeth of the 

 ayu are very peculiar, for they constitute a series of saw- 

 edged folds or plaits along the sides of the jaws, quite dif- 

 ferent from those of any other fish whatsoever. 



In size the ayu is not more than a foot to fifteen inches 

 long. It is like a trout in build, and its scales are just as 

 small. It is light yellowish or olive in color, growing sil- 

 very below. Behind its gills is a bar of bright shining yel- 

 low of a color you will not see in any other river fish, and 

 its adipose fin is edged with scarlet. The fins are yellow, 

 and the dorsal fin shaded with black, while the anal fin is 

 dashed with pale red. 



So much for the river and the ayu. It is time for us to 



