SIB HERBERT MAXWELL is surprisingly industrious and versatile, for it
is but a short time since The Creevey Papers appeared. There has long been a place open for a popular and accurate work on British fish, and the volume which be has contributed to the "Woburn Library of Natural History" goes some way towards filling the vacancy. Although he is in no sense a scientific ichthyologist, he is sufficiently in touch with recent research and modern saience. At the same time, he is an angler, an observant riverside naturalist, and one who has an intimate knowledge of the investigations which have been made into the problems of the salmon and the needs of tart BritiSh Frash-Water Ashes. By the Bight Hon. Sir Herbert Harwell, Bart, F.H.B. With 12 Coloured Plates, including 22 Figures from Photo- graph& London: Hutchinson and Co. LlEs. 6d.,3
due regard to scientific, although slightly antiquated, classification and terminology. We cannot, however, help wishing that he would avoid those very distasteful expres- sions, " to wit," " albeit," " whereof," " to boot," and "withal," which are generally characteristic of writers very inferior to Sir Herbert, and which appear with needless frequency. The coloured illestrations are a feature of the book. They are very good, but it is, to our mind, a mistake to depict the pike, which is one of our largest fish, on the same page as the leach, which is one of our smallest, and to make them both of the same size. The minnow, too, is depicted four times the size of life, and of the same length as the dace above it. A note beneath as to their comparative natural sizes does not remove the objection. Again, when only a limited number of species are chosen for the illustra- tions, it would be better to choose the rarer instead of the most common. Every one, almost, knows the appearance of an eel, a pike, a perch, and a roach. It would have added to the value of the book to have given us instead portraits of the burbot, the crucian carp, the powan, the vendace, the allis shad, and other rare British fresh-water fish which few have seen or are ever likely to see.
A couple of short introductory chapters deal with the general structure and habits of fish. Then the various species are reviewed in order, beginning with the sturgeon, the largest fish which frequents British inland waters, and the only one of the archaic fishes : a sub-class which bears the same rela- tion to other fish as the marsupials do to other mammals. Sir Herbert acknowledges only forty-four species of British fresh- water fish. This is a good many fewer than Dr. Gunther, one of the highest authorities on ichthyology, recognises ; but we do not think that moat naturalists will nowadays be unwilling to admit that many former species of the salmon family are evidently only local varieties. The king of fish, the sturgeon, is followed by the Percidae, including the perch ; the bass, a marine fish which comes into tidal waters ; and the ruffe, or "pope," which in consequence of its latter name was subjected to cruel persecution in days when "No Popery!" roused Protestant feelings. The miller's thumb of our shallow brooks is well known to schoolboys, and so are the three species of stickleback, with three, four, and ten spines respectively. This brings us to the burbot, the only member of the cod family that haunts our inland waters, and which is found in a few of our East Anglian rivers. The flounder is the only flatfish. It is really a salt-water fish, but used to make its way up to Teddington before the Thames was polluted, and would go higher but for the weirs. The great family Cyprinidae comprises sixteen members, and is headed, of course, by the carp, which, however, is not an indigenous species, but came, it is believed, originally from China. The crucian carp is probably also imported, for it occurs nowhere but in the Thames Valley. The goldfish,2which is almost perfectly natural- ised in places, is of course also Chinese. The barbel, the gudgeon, and the roach all supply the humble angler with sport, and the second of these has additional merits in being excellent when fried. The rudd is so like the roach that the two are often confused, but according to Sir Herbert a vertical line dropped from the front of the dorsal fin of a roach will intersect the ventral fin, whilst in a rudd it will pass a considerable distance behind it. The chub and the dace are both " coarae " fish, which rise freely to artificial flies. The little minnow has more names than any other fish : minnow, pink, baggie, baggit, banny, Jack Barrel, Jack Sharp, meaker, menot, minim, peer, shadbrid, and minnin. are all synonymous. When William of Wykeham gave a banquet to Richard n, seven gallons of minnows were served, but now they are only valued as food for larger fish. The tench, which was long believed to possess wonderful medicinal qualities, the bream, and the white bream, which latter is rare in Britain, but one of the commonest fish on the Continent, follow in order. Next comes the lively and silvery bleak, from whose scales is obtained the essence d' Orient with which artificial pearls are made. The loach is said to be excellent eating, and Linnaeus declares that Frederick I. introduced it into Sweden for this reason. The spined loach is allied, but very rare in our island, though its range extends from Japan to the rivers of the Southern counties. The pike comes next in order; and this brings us to. the Salmoniclae, family has been very variously classified; and Sir Herbert's reasons for recognising only five species of the genus Salmo
are worth attention. The difficulties which perplex naturalists have been greatly increased by the differences between the
young and the mature fish. Until quite recent years the salmon parr was universally regarded as a distinct species. The striking varieties among local races, which are only pro- duced by surroundings, and the wast number of local names, have also made confusion worse. Sir Herbert's five species of Salmo are as follows :—The salmon (S. salar), the bull trout (S. erica), the sea trout (S. trutta), the common brown trout (S. fario), and the char (S. alpinus). All others are dismissed as mere varieties, and the numbers of these may be judged by the fact that Dr. Gunther accepted six separate species of char alone.
The chapters on the salmon will be read with as much interest as any in the book, particularly the one in which Sir Herbert summarises the results of recent research on the salmon problems. "Truth it is that upon no subject of human interest, theology always excepted, has controversy raged more fiercely or dogma been more fearlessly wielded,
than upon the habits and nature of this noble fish." He is firmly convinced that the salmon does not feed in fresh water, but only in the sea, where it devours herrings, haddocks, and other fish. The smolts which leave the river weighing two or three ounces return in about a year weighing from two to twelve pounds. It is possible that these bigger grilse have spent two years in the sea. As a rule they return to the same river, but three salmon marked in the Helmsdale were recaptured in the Brora twelve miles off, and another captured in the Spey and retaken in the Dee must have travelled about ninety miles. The impulse to work up the river is over- poweringly strong, but a clear jump of six feet is the maximum of a salmon's performance. To render it possible for the salmon to reach their spawning-grounds, by preventing over- netting, by removing obstacles, and by providing artificial spates, is labour well repaid in improving fisheries. Sir Herbert is no believer in hatcheries and artificial rearing, and after some interesting pages in which he balances the argu- ments, he concludes :— "I am of opinion, therefore, that the money at present spent in salmon-hatcheries in this country would be better applied in providing protection to spawning fish, and in constructing dams on natural lakes for the purpose of flooding the rivers in time of drought to enable fish to ascend to the upper .waters."
It is an illusion also to think that kelts which are on their way to the sea after spawning are ravenous, and ready to devour the young of their own species. Lastly, we are glad to see Sir Herbert laughing at the credulity of anglers who believe that a vast variety of flies made of costly foreign plumes have any particular attraction for British salmon.
The remaining Salmonidae in the list of British fish are the smelt, the grayling, and three species of Coregonus,—viz., the powan, or gwyniad, inhabiting a few deep lakes; the pollan, only found in the lakes of Ireland ; and the vendace, a gre- garious lake fish, which is quite falsely believed to have been imported from France by Mary Queen of Scots. Next comes the allis shad and the twait shad, two species belonging to the herring family which used to be common in the Thames, and still frequent the Severn and the Wye. The natural history of the eels, of which there are two kinds—the common, and the broad-nosed eel or grig—is so interesting that we wish space allowed us to quote from, and to criticise some of, Sir Herbert's chapter on this fish. The reproduction of eels was an enigma which puzzled naturalists from Aristotle to Gesner, and it was not until 1896 that Grassi, an Italian, proved beyond doubt that a so-called Leptocephalus was the young of the common eel produced from eggs laid in the sea, whither every eel, even from the most landlocked waters, must proceed to breed. As elvers the young are well known when they ascend the rivers in myriads. Whether they ever return to the rivers after spawning in the sea is still a mystery. The last in the classified list of British fish are the lampreys, in- separably connected in most persons' minds with the death of Henry I., as Sir Herbert does not omit to remind us.
We have written enough to show the nature and scope of this work. It is a book which may well be added to the library of every country house. It will be read with interest
by every angler, with the knowledge that it is reliable although a popular work. An excellent index and a thorough method of classification snake it also valuable for purposes of reference when disputed questions of ichthyology arise.
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