FISH. 
29 
A cross-bill floxia curvirostra) was killed last year in this 
neighbourhood. 
Our streams, which are small, and rise only at the end of the 
village, yield nothing but the bull's head or miller's thumb 
Cgohius jluviatilis capitatus),* \ht trout CtruttaJluviatilisJ,f the eel 
(anguilla), the lampern (lampcetra parva et jluviatilis), % and the 
stickle-back (pisciculus aculeatus). 
We are twenty miles from the sea, and almost as many from a 
great river, and therefore see but little of sea-birds. As to wild 
fowls, we have a few teams of ducks bred in the moors where the 
snipes breed ; and multitudes of widgeons and teals in hard wea- 
ther frequent our lakes in the forest. 
Having some acquaintance with a tame brown-owl, I find 
that it casts up the fur of mice, and the feathers of birds in 
* Cottus gobio, the river bull-head, a small and very comnr,on brook and river fish throughout 
England, and which is most abundant in small streamlets with gravelly or sandy bottoms, being 
generally found among loose stones, beneath which they hide (the peculiar flattened form of the 
head enabling them to thrust themselves under), and from which they issue with great rapidity 
to seize the larvae of aquatic insects, &c., on which they feed. It is a very slimy fish, and has 
rather an uncouth appearance, the eyes being placed close together on the top of the head, which 
is very large and flat. — There are also two marine species of Cottus, extremely common upon the 
British shores, but which are not usually found together — the lasher bullhead {C-bubalus), and 
the scorpion bullhead {C- scorpius) • A fourth (C. quadricornis) occurs as a straggler. Another 
and very singular looking British fish, allied to these, is tlie pogge, or " lyrie" of the Scotch 
{Aspidophorus europceus) • All .these are exquisitely figured and desciibed in Mr. YarrelFs beau- 
tiful work on British fishes, which should be in the hands of every naturalist. — Ed. 
t Salmo fario. — Ed. 
t The common brook lamprey {PetromyzonJIuviatilis) . There are three ascertained British spe- 
cies of this genus, all of which ascend the rivers and brooks to spawn, and which are named (but 
not very significantly) p. marinus, Jluviatilis, and planeri. This form is about the last of fishes, the 
lowest in the scale of vertebrate animals, having merely a rudimentary vertebral column. It is 
curious to see them feed. " Fastening," as a writer in the Field Naturalist's Magazine observes, 
** by means of their sucker-like mouth, to stones of considerable size, they contrive by strong 
muscular exertion, accompanied by considerable dilatation of the seven small orifices on each 
side of the head, to move them from their places, when, instantly letting go their hold, they 
commence an investigation of the spot whence the stone was removed, feeding on any small insects 
which had made their haunts beneath it." Their spawning beds are formed in a similar man- 
ner. "They are not," says Sir W. Jardine, "furnished with any elongation of jaw, affbrded to 
most of our fresh-water fish, to form the receiving furrows in this important season, but the want 
is supplied by their sucker-like mouth, by which they individually remove each stone. Their 
power is immense; stones of a very large size are transported, and a large furrow is soon formed. 
The p. marinus remain in pairs, two at each spawning-place, and while there employed retain 
themselves aflfixed to a large stone. The P. fluviatilis, and another small species which I have 
not determined" (probably P. planeri), "are gregarious, acting in concert, and forming, in 
the same manner, a general spawning bed." It is hardly necessary to remark, in reference to 
the*size of the stones which the lampreys manage to remove with such apparent facility, that a 
much less degree of muscular power suffices to lift these under water than would be required in 
the lighter medium, air, in which we move. In many parts of England the different lampreys 
are popularly termed " nine-eyes," from the above-mentioned seven small orifices on each side 
of the head, through which, in place of gills, they breathe. The lai'ge species is in many parts 
exclusively designated " lamprey," and the two smaller kinds are ^commonly confounded under 
the term " lampern." — En. 
