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arranged that it can be opened or closed at will. The frame- 
work^ when set in operation_, is placed by the side of the boat 
at a depth of about four feet from the surface of the water, 
and is retained in this position by means of ropes, which pass 
from its upper part to the gunwale of the boat, and are there 
belayed by the fishermen. From time to time the purse is 
drawn out of the water, and emptied of its contents. When a 
sufiicient number of the fish have been taken, they are trans- 
mitted by boats, appointed for the purpose, to the several 
agents at Blackwall and Greenwich; but the fishing craft- 
remain upon the grounds during the entire season. That the 
whitebait is essentially a marine fish is proved by the fact that 
the various attempts to preserve it alive in wells of fresh- water 
provided in the boats have been invariably unsuccessful. 
The whitebait being a fish which is solely eaten by Lon- 
doners or visitors to London, it naturallv awakens httle interest 
in the minds of those who live at a distance from or seldom 
visit this great metropolis. Nevertheless, it is a creature 
which has from time to time engaged the marked attention of 
naturalists, who have sought to discover whether it was a 
species loer se, or was merely the young of some other fish. 
Its claim to the rank of species was persistently denied it by 
all naturalists till in the year 1828 Mr. Yarrell, who carefully 
studied the question, pleaded its cause before the fellows of 
the Zoological Society, and obtained a verdict in its favour. 
The whitebait all along appears to have merited the privileges 
and immunities which belong to mature members of his family, 
but through the prejudices and blunders of Pennant, Donovan, 
and others, he continued for half a century to be regarded 
as a minor. No one believed he was a perfect fish, and hence 
he was considered to be the fry of some more favoured denizen 
of the ocean. The opinions as to his paternity were divided 
between the shad and the bleak. Donovan advocated the 
former, and the latter found a not very -sanguine supporter in 
old Pennant, who, in the work we havn already alluded to, 
makes the following remarks : — * « - 
That they (whitebait) neither belong to the shad ndf the sj)rat is evident 
from the number of branchiostegous rays, which in them are eight, in this 
only three. That they are not the young of smelts is as clear, because they 
have not the pinna adiposa, or rayless fin ; and that they are not the offspring 
of the bleak is extremely probable, since we never heard of the whitebait 
being found in any other river, notwithstanding the bleak is very common in 
several of the British; streams'; but. as the whitebait bears a greater similarity 
Loc. cit., p. 372. 
