WHITEBAIT. 479 
of aristocratic entree. Tliat it may not be thought we exag- 
gerate^ we quote Pennant^s words : — * 
During the month of July there appear in the Thames, near Blackwall 
and Greenwich, innumerable multitudes of small fish, which are known to 
the Londoners by the name of whitebait. They are esteemed very delicious 
when fried with fine flour, and occasion during the season a vast resort of the 
lower order of epicures to the taverns contiguous to the places they are 
taken at. 
Indeed^ another circumstance w^ould seem to show that the 
whitebait must_, till within recent years^ have been a favourite 
of the masses only — the fishery was for some time suppressed^ 
or attempted to be suppressed^, by the Lord Mayor. Now^ had 
the fish been as congenial to the aldermanic palate as it is in 
these times^ this result would hardly have fallen out. Whether 
the City dignitary^s efforts were successful or not we cannot 
say ; but at any rate the fifteenth printed rule which emanated 
from him and his court orders^ that no person shall take_, at 
any time of the year^ any sort of fish usually called whitebait^ 
upon pain to forfeit and pay five pounds for every such offence ; 
it appearing to this courts that under pretence of taking white- 
bait^ the small fry of various species of fish are destroyed. It 
is almost needless to say that this rule was framed under a 
complete misconception^ for^ from the nature of the apparatus 
employed in the capture of whitebait and the season in which 
they are taken^ the only fry which can pass into the net are those 
of gobies^ sticklebacks^ and shrimps_, the destruction of which 
is hardly a matter of much importance. The reader must not 
suppose that nowadays whitebait are to be taken as high 
as Blackwall and Greenwich. Bather Thames has fallen since 
Pennant^s time into habits of un cleanness^ and the whitebait_, 
with a due regard for their gills and nostrils^ decline to come 
up beyond Gravesend and Woolwich. At these points^ then^ 
the fisheries are held, commencing usually in April, and ter- 
minating in September. Being strictly a sea-fish, the white- 
bait can only be taken when the tide is at flood, and the- water 
decidedly brackish; under such circumstances the fishermen 
moor their boat in mid- stream, and proceed to their labours. 
The net is a sort of bag-net, with a small mesh, which diminishes 
in size toward the end — in fact, is somewhat like that employed 
in weirs for taking eels. It is attached by its mouth to a wooden 
framework, about three feet square, and has its purse so 
-X- a British Zoology,” by Thomas Pennant. London : printed for Benj. 
White. 1776. Pp. 371-2, vol. iii. 
