WHITEBAIT. 
481 
to this fish than to any other we have mentioned, we give it a place here as an 
appendix to the hleak, rather than form a distinct article of a fish which it is 
impossible to class with certainty Its usual length is two inches. 
Pennant^s conclusion was certainly a remarkable one^ for 
though he felt compelled to admit that he was unwarranted, 
scientifically, in classing the whitebait with other fish, still, 
with that desire for some fixed belief which is so common a 
characteristic of mankind, he determined that it must be a 
bleak. Dr. Shaw, in his General Zoology,^^ adopts Pen- 
nanPs view, but Mr. Donovan, both in his “ History of British 
Fishes and in an article in ^‘^Rees^ Cyclopaedia,'^'’ contends 
that the shad is the progenitor of the whitebait. Writing of 
the fornaer [Clupea cdosa), the author of the article * we 
refer to remarks : — 
The young of this species has been very recently ascertained by us to be 
no other than the little fish known commonly by the name of the white- 
bait. 
Here follows an analysis of pre-existing opinions, in which 
the writer, in the most dogmatic conceivable manner, pro- 
ceeds to annihilate the views of others, and to censure the 
imperfect observations which led to their adoption. His 
condemnation of Pennant is interesting, if only from the 
circumstance that it is far more applicable to the writer him- 
self, who has been guilty of all that he attributes to his 
predecessor, 
Every circumstance considered (says Mr. Donovan), we cannot avoid con- 
cluding that much of the prevailing errors respecting whitebait has arisen 
from the incautious observations of Mr. Pennant on this subject ; that this 
author never saw the whitebait, and that succeeding naturalists, too implicitly 
relying on his observations. Have been inadvertently precipitated into those 
errors which the most casual observation of the fish in question would have 
enabled them to detect. If, however, contrary to this assertion, M^. Pennant 
ever did examine the fish, his specimens must have been either in a most un- 
perfect state, or his investigation of it unpardonably negligent. His figure 
conveys no just idea of the fish, and his critical animadversions are laboriously 
intricate and defective The whitebait certainly possesses every 
criterion of the species as evidently as the parent or full-gTown fish ; its out- 
line is the same ; its fins are alike : it exhibits the same serrations on the 
abdomen, and cleft on the snout ; and, what is even remarkable in a fish of 
* “ The Cyclop£edia ; or. Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and 
Literature.” By Abraham Kees, D.D., F.K.S. London. 1819. 
