Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/222

208 as far as we know, in the northern division, both of the one and the other hemisphere. Of this great host, one hundred and twenty-five species are marked by Bonaparte as European, and twenty are found, in greater or less abundance, in British waters. Austria and Prussia are the chief Carp countries in Europe, but the streams of temperate and southern Asia constitute the great home of the group.

Among the twenty native species are some of the fishes most familiar to anglers; such as the Carps proper (of which there are three kinds), the Gold-fish of our parlours and reservoirs, the grovelling and wallowing Barbel, the Gudgeon, the slimy Tench, the three kinds of Bream, the crimson-finned Roach, the silvery Dace and Grayling, the "logger-head Chub," the golden Rudd, the Bleak, whose scales are used in making artificial pearls, and the brilliant little Minnow, the desire and delight of truant school-boys.

The true Carps, which are numerous, have the lips fleshy and moderately thick, but not plaited nor notched; there are sometimes small cirri or tentacles at the corner of the mouth; the jaws are of equal length. The dorsal is lengthened, with the first and second rays bony; the second ray of this fin, as well as the first of the anal, is cut into strong teeth along its hinder edge.

The fleshy tubercles which are found attached to the lips of some of the Carps, occasionally produced into cirri or beards, and which, in the Barbels, an allied genus, are large and