Page:British Reptiles, Amphibians, and Fresh-water Fishes.djvu/75

RIVER LAMPREY like the Eel, which goes to its ancestral home, the sea, to perform that all-important operation.

Mr. C. Tate Regan, M.A., gives a list of 23 species of fresh-water fishes that are peculiar to the British Isles. Of these no less than 15 of the 23 species belong to the Char kind, and Char, as Mr. Tate Regan says, "are essentially fishes of mountain lakes, which are usually deep and cold; in our islands they are found in Scotland, Ireland, the Lake District of England, and North Wales, in fact in all parts where there are suitable lakes."

For the purpose of this book it has been thought best to include those kinds of fishes with which the average individual is likely to come into contact, and as to which the general reader requires information, but we have stretched a point in including those familiar species which, like the Eel and Salmon already referred to, pass part of their time in fresh-water and part in salt.

Thirty-two species await attention, and these may now be dealt with.

River Lamprey.—Lampetra fluviatilis (Fig. 29). The name Lamprey is derived from an old Latin word Lampreda which is corrupted from a more ancient word Lampetra, from lambere, to lick, and petra, a stone. It is also called Nine-Eyes and Stone-Eel, the former from its eye, nasal slit, and seven gill-openings, and the latter because of its habit of attaching itself to stones. This small eel-shaped fish, the possessor of a long tongue, with a rasp attached to it which enables it to rip other fishes to pieces so as to feed upon their flesh, is 59