192 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
Whatever virtue its slime may have to the inhabitants of 
the water, we will not vouch for, but its flesh is a whciu- 
sonie and delicious food to those of the earth. The Ger- 
mans are of a different opinion. By way of contempt they 
call it shoemaker. Gessner even says, that it is insipid and 
unwholesome. 
It does not commonly exceed four or five pounds in 
weight, but we have heard of one that weighed ten pounds; 
Salvianus speaks of some that arrived at twenty pounds. 
They love still waters, and are rarely found in rivers ; 
they are very foolish, and easily caught. 
The tench is thick and short in proportion to its length ; 
the scales are very small, and covered with slime. 
The hides are red ; there is sometimes, but not always, 
a small beard at each corner of the mouth. 
The colour of the back is dusky ; the dorsal and ventral 
fins of the same colour ; the head, sides and belly, of a 
greenish cast, most beautifully mixed with gold, which is 
in it3 greatest splendour when the fish is in the highest 
season. 
The tail is quite even at the end, and very broad. 
Aristotle mentions the Gudgeon in two places, once as 
a river fish, again as a species that was gregarious ; and in 
a third plaee he describes it as a sea fish. 
This fish is generally found in gentle streams, and is of a 
small size ; those few, however, that are caught in the 
Kennet and Cole, are three times the weight of those taken 
elsewhere. The largest we ever heard of was taken near 
Uxbridge, and weighed half a pound. 
They bile eagerly, and are assembled by raking the bed 
of the river; to this spot they immediately crowd in shoals, 
expecting food from this disturbance. 
The shape of the body is thick and round ; the irides 
tinged with red ; the gill covers with green and silver; the 
lower jaw is shorter than the upper ; at each corner of the 
mouth is a single beard; the back olive, spotted with black; 
the side-line straight ; the sides beneath that silvery; the 
belly white. 
The tail is forked ; that, as well as the dorsal fin is 
spotted with black. 
The Hr earn is an inhabitant of lakes, or the deep parts 
of still rivers. It is a fish that is very little esteemed, being 
extremely insipid. 
It is extremely deep, and thin in proportion to its length. 
The hack rises much, and is very sharp at the top. Tlie 
head and mouth are small ; on some we examined in the 
