ROACH. 
777 
from impure and muddy water it turns red after boil- 
ing - and acquires a strong, unpleasant taste of mud. 
On attaining a length of 20 — 25 cm. the Roach gener- 
ally grows fat, and is then known as Kartmort or 
Grytmort. Its fatness depends, however, on the food- 
supply, which consists of vegetable substances, insects, 
larvte, and mollusks. It seldom lives long in a cauf, 
unless taken during the spawning-season. 
The Roach is one of our most useful fishes, both 
as a welcome addition to the coarse fare of the poor", 
and as a valuable bait for larger and more esteemed 
tishes, in which respect it is inferior to none of our 
indigenous piscine forms. Though it is most often 
taken, in great or small numbers, with seines of several 
kinds, other tackle is also used, consisting of traps , 
which are set during the spawning-season in weirs 
(verke, see above, p. 32), or Roach-nets, which are etn- j 
ployed either in summer, when they are shot off weedy 
shores, or during the spawning-season, round the weirs 
in which the traps are placed. At the latter season 
they may also be set round the reeds or beds of weeds 
where the Roach spawns, in which case the fish are 
driven towards the net with the fork (see above, p. 
741, fig. 185). Lastly, the Roach is taken with rod 
and line, and bites during the whole summer. Winter- 
angling on the ice is practised only to procure Roach 
for bait. But few fish are caught in this manner. 
The above characters seem quite sufficient to ren- 
der the Roach easily recognisable; but both in form 
and coloration it sometimes varies beyond comprehen- 
sion, and several nominal species have thus originated. 
Fatio has arranged these varieties in three groups: 
1) Leuciscus rutilus, var. data, with body of extra- 
ordinary depth, closely resembling that of the Rudd — 
to this group belong the Leuciscus rutiloides of Selys- 
Loxgchamps 6 and Nordmann’s (1. c.) Leuciscus Heckelii; 
2) X. rutilus, var. elongata, with body extraordinarily 
elongated (shallow) and only slightly compressed, more 
like that of the Dace — comprising IIeckel’s leuciscus 
Selysii and Agassiz’ X. prasinus; and 3) X. rutilus, 
var. crassa, with body of extraordinary thickness, in 
appearance not unlike the Chub, but most nearly allied 
to the Italian Leuciscus aula. Heckel found in Lake 
Egel (Upper Austria) a form which lie called Leuciscus 
Pausingeri, with comparatively high dorsal and low 
anal fins. This form was again met with by Malm in 
Lake Bolmen (Sweden), and hence was named by him 
Leuciscus rutilus, forma bolmensis. Fatio discovered 
a remarkable malformation of the Roach in Lake Bru- 
nig, an Alpine lake now almost dry, and situated 1,160 
in. above the level of the sea. Roach and Perch were 
introduced into this lake at about the middle of the 
last century. As the lake gradually dried up and 
shrank into a small, deep pool of very clear water, the 
Roach, which he never found to measure more than 
16 cm., and whose eyes, as usual in fishes of stunted 
growth, were comparatively large, had suffered an 
albinotic change of colour. The back was pale green, 
the sides were pure silvery white, the fins almost colour- 
less, but the eyes deep red. In most of them too — 
perhaps because they were compelled, like Bleak, to 
seek their food at the surface — the mouth was more 
oblique than usual, resembling that of the Rudd, with 
more projecting chin. In other localities, in Northern 
Germany (Danzig and the Frische Haff, according to 
Siebold), in France (the Seille, a tributary of the Mo- 
selle), and in Switzerland (the Lake of Geneva), the 
said albinism has produced the Gold Roach, a form 
analogous to the Gold Ide already mentioned. To con- 
clude, the sociable propensities of the Roach, in Sweden 
and in many other places, have induced it to join com- 
pany with other Cyprinoids engaged in spawning. 
Hence hybrids — or at least forms reasonably capable 
of this interpretation — have been found between the 
Roach and the Rudd, Bleak, Bream, and White Bream. 
(Ekstrom, Smitt.) 
a The Roach is equally important in South-eastern Russia, where, according to Grimm, three or four hundred millions are annually 
taken in the Caspian Sea, and about a hundred millions in the Black Sea with the Rivers Kuban and Don. 
h Faime Belrje, p. 212. 
