Defcr. 
White 
bait. 
316 BA Oo Abe Clafs IV. 
The bleak feldom exceeds five or fix inches in 
length: their body is flender, greatly comprefied 
fideways, not unlike that of the {prat. 
The eyes are large: the irides of a pale yellow: 
the under jaw the longeft : the lateral line crooked: 
the gills filvery : the back green: the fides and belly 
filvery: the fins pellucid: the fcales fall off very 
eafily: the tail much forked. 
During the month of Fuly thofe appear in the 
Thames, near Blackwall and Greenwich, innumerable 
multitudes of {mall fifh, which are known to the 
Londoners by the name of White Bait. ‘They are 
efteemed very delicious when fried with fine flour, 
and occafion, during the feafon, a vaft refort of the 
lower order of epicures to the taverns contiguous to 
the places they are taken at. 
There are various conjectures about this fpecies, 
but all terminate in a fuppofition that they are the 
_ fry of fome fifh, but few agree to which kind they 
owe their origin. Some attribute it to the fhad, 
others to the fprat, the {melt, and the bleak. That 
they neither belong to the fhad, nor the fprat, is 
evident from the number of branchioftegous rays, | 
which in thofe are eight, in -this only three. That 
they are not the young of {melts is as clear, becaufe 
they want the pina adipofa, or raylets fin; and that 
they are not the offspring of the bleak is extremely 
probable, fince we never heard of the white bait 
being found in any other river, notwithitanding the 
bleak is very common in feveral of the Britifh 
ftreams: but as the white bait bears a ereater fimi- 
larity to this fifh than to any other we have men- 
tioned 
