Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/254

240 the tube. A dim circle of light is thus shed upon the bed of the stream, when the Trout, attracted by the light, crowd around the globe as moths around a candle. The fisherman then slowly raises the lamp, which the fish follow, towards the surface. He can now select the finest fish at his leisure, which he strikes with a well-directed blow on the head with his heavy knife. The fish instantly sinks to the bottom, but it is only for a moment, for it presently rises to the surface bloody and dead, and, floating there, is presently deposited in a bag hung round the operator's neck. The other fishes, alarmed for the moment, are soon attracted again, and become successively the prey of the fisherman, until his desires are satisfied.

In most of their characteristics the Herrings agree with the Salmons; and so close is the affinity between the two Families that the members of the Salmonidan genus Coregonus, the Pollans and Powans of our lakes, are called by the peasantry, both in this country and Ireland, the Freshwater Herrings. The same graceful form, curved in gently swelling outlines, and tapering to a point at each extremity, characterizes this Family, as the preceding; and like it the present is clothed in large, well-formed scales, very easily detached. Their chief distinction is the absence of the adipose fin in the Herrings, which have only a single dorsal of the ordinary structure, placed