PLATE XCVIII. 
line straight.” The general description is to the following effect. 
“ Pupil black ; iris silvery ; lower jaw longer ; head, sides, and belly 
silvery ; back tinged with green : dorsal fin nearer the head than the 
tail, and with about fourteen rays : tail forked, the tips black.”— 
It will be proper to add, that in the Gmelinian Systems, Nature no 
mention is made of this fish, and that Dr. Turton has inserted it, to 
all appearance, on the authority of Mr. Pennant. 
i 
Our observations commenced with stating the White-bait to be the 
genuine offspring of the Shad, and consequently of the Clupea, in- 
stead of Cyprinus genus, as the preceding authors consider it. Thi* 
we shall have little difficulty in determining. To speak with inde- 
cision on a point that admits of not the slightest doubt is needless : 
when we deliver an opinion merely it is becoming to express it with 
diffidence ; but indecision and diffidence are misapplied to matters' 
removed beyond the possibility of doubt, and such is the fact exactly 
with regard to the White-bait. 
I * t 
Every circumstance considered, we cannot avoid concluding, that 
much of the prevailing errors respecting the White-bait has originated 
from the incautious observations of Mr. Pennant on this subject : — 
that this author never saw the White-bait ; and that succeeding 
Naturalists, too implicitly relying upon his observations, have been 
inadvertently precipitated into those errors which the most casual 
examination of the fish in question would have enabled them to 
detect. If, however, contrary to this suggestion, Mr. Pennant ever 
did examine the fish, his specimens must have been either in a most 
imperfect state, or his investigation of it unpardonably hasty and 
negligent. His figure conveys no just idea of the fish, and his 
critical animadversions are laboriously intricate and defective. He 
