PLATE LVIL 
Fiscli*. All those rivers it leaves again in autumn, returning at 
that season to the sea. It is not a little extraordinary, that the fry 
of the Shad has never yet been ascertained, although those first 
ascend rivers to deposit their spawn, and must be therefore hatched 
in such places as may be easily visited by the inquisitive naturalist. 
We are persuaded there need no longer exist any doubt as to the 
identity of the fry of this fish. There is a diminutive species of 
Clupea, called a white bait, that is found in abundance during the 
summer, in the Thames, near Greenwich, which is evidently the 
young of the common Shad, notwithstanding the opinion of Mr. 
Pennant to the contrary. This fish has excited much curious spe- 
culation. The author of the British Zoology, enters at length upon 
the subject, and after endeavouring to prove that it is neither the 
fry of the Shad, the Sprat, the Smelt, or the Bleak, concludes that they 
approach the nearest to the Bleak, under which head he describes it. 
The Thames affords this fish in shoals, from the beginning of 
May till the middle of June, about which time the fishermen are 
prohibited from taking them, because at that time they are in full 
spawn. A short time after they again disappear, only a few strag- 
glers remaining in the river till the end of July, or beginning of 
August, when the fishermen find no more till the summer fol- 
lowing. * 
Being considered as a poor insipid food, the Shad bears an inferior 
price compared with other fish in the neighbourhood of London, a 
fish of two or three pounds weight being commonly sold for about 
* Bloch. 
