cles, the parents themselves, especially the males, being at the same time brilliantly adorned by ruddy green and gold. The flesh of the minnow is delicate and well flavoured, but its size is too small to admit of its being of much value as an article of food. It is principally used as a bait for the capture of the larger kinds.

We here name this familiar species also rather from love to the associations of early life, than from any respect we bear to its own character. The loach is entirely a ground fish, living in clear and gravelly streams. It forms an excellent bait for eels, and is also a nutritious food for man, though of a slimy surface, and somewhat forbidding aspect. It feeds on small worms, and various aquatic insects, and is very prolific,—spawning in early spring. Its flesh is highly regarded by many, and some continental people hold it in such esteem, as to cause its transportation from one river to another, at considerable expense and trouble. Frederick the First of Sweden, caused loaches to be carried from Germany, with a view to their being naturalized in his own more northern kingdom.t

* Cobitis barbatula, Linn.

+FAUNA SUECICA.

"That pike," says Mr. Yarrell, "were rare formerly, may be inferred from the fact, that in the latter part of the thirteenth century, Edward the First, who condescended to regulate the prices of the different sorts of fish then brought to market, that his subjects might not be left to the mercy of the venders, fixed the value of pike higher than that of fresh salmon, and more than ten times greater than that of the best turbot or cod. In proof of the estimation in which pike were held in the reign of Edward the Third, I may again refer to the time of Chaucer, already quoted at page 336. Pikes are men

The voracity of this fish is almost unexampled, even in a class remarkable for their omnivorous propensities. Goslings, young ducks, and coots, water-rats, kittens, and the young of its own species, besides every kind of fresh water fish, have been found in the stomach of the pike. It is said to contend with the otter for its prey, and has been known to pull a mule into the water by the nose, and a washerwoman by the foot.

There seems, indeed, to be no bounds to its gluttony, as it devours almost indiscriminately whatever edible substance it meets with, and swallows every animal it can subdue. "It is," says Lacepede, "the shark of the fresh waters, and reigns there a devastating tyrant, as does its prototype in the midst of the ocean; insatiable in its appetites, it ravages with fearful rapidity the streams, the lakes, the fish ponds, wherever it inhabits. Blindly ferocious, it does not spare its species, and devours even its own young; gluttonous without choice, it tears and swallows with a sort of fury the remains even of putrid carcases. This blood-thirsty

creature is also one of those to which nature has accorded the longest duration of years; for ages it terrifies, agitates, pursues, murders, and devours the feebler inhabitants of the waters; and as if, in spite of its insatiable cruelty it was meant it should

tioned in an Act of the sixth year of the reign of Richard the Second, 1382, which relates to the forstalling of fish." "Pike were so rare in the reign of Henry the Eighth, that a large one sold for double the price of a house-lamb in February, and a picherel, or small pike, for more than a fat capon."-BRITISH FISHES, vol. i. p. 384.