As
You Stand Thus Stooping Over The Bream In Its Nest, The Edges Of
The Dorsal And Caudal Fins Have A Singular Dusty Golden
Reflection, And Its Eyes, Which Stand Out From The Head, Are
Transparent And Colorless.
Seen in its native element, it is a
very beautiful and compact fish, perfect in all its parts, and
looks like a brilliant coin fresh from the mint.
It is a perfect
jewel of the river, the green, red, coppery, and golden
reflections of its mottled sides being the concentration of such
rays as struggle through the floating pads and flowers to the
sandy bottom, and in harmony with the sunlit brown and yellow
pebbles. Behind its watery shield it dwells far from many
accidents inevitable to human life.
There is also another species of bream found in our river,
without the red spot on the operculum, which, according to
M. Agassiz, is undescribed.
The Common Perch, _Perca flavescens_, which name describes well the
gleaming, golden reflections of its scales as it is drawn out of
the water, its red gills standing out in vain in the thin
element, is one of the handsomest and most regularly formed of
our fishes, and at such a moment as this reminds us of the fish
in the picture which wished to be restored to its native element
until it had grown larger; and indeed most of this species that
are caught are not half grown. In the ponds there is a
light-colored and slender kind, which swim in shoals of many
hundreds in the sunny water, in company with the shiner,
averaging not more than six or seven inches in length, while only
a few larger specimens are found in the deepest water, which prey
upon their weaker brethren.
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