Returning, however, to our whitebait, it may be stated that that fish was once thought to be the young of the shad, which is itself an interesting fish, coming from the sea to deposit its spawn in the fresh waters. The shad was at one time thought to be the patriarch of the herring tribe; and it was said, in the days when the old theory about the migration of the herring was believed in, that the great shoals which came to this country from the icy seas of the high latitudes were led on their wonderful tour by a few thousands of this gigantic fish. Pennant conjectured that whitebait was an independent species, but so difficult is it to investigate such facts in the water that it was not till many years had elapsed that the question was set at rest so far as to determine at any rate that whitebait were not the young of either the Alice or the Twaite shad, which, by the by, is a coarse and insipid fish— “_Alusæ_, crackling on the embers, are Of wretched poverty the insipid fare.” Some investigations I have in hand may settle the question whether or not the whitebait be herring-fry or a distinct fish. As yet I have never at any season of the year found an example of whitebait containing either milt or roe, although it is said that examples may be taken full of both during the early winter months. This, of course, is not conclusive evidence of its being the young of some other fish, although it would go some length in proving it a distinct species; but I need not enter further into the controversy at present, as it is not of much interest to the general reader, except to say that whitebait, whatever species it may belong to, comes up from the sea, where it has been spawned, to feed in the river. I may mention that this fish cannot now be taken so far up the river Thames as formerly. Whitebait are now usually caught between Gravesend and Woolwich, and the fish are in their best season between April and September. It is not unusual for sea fish to ascend our rivers: the eel, as I have already narrated, spawns in the sea, and the young of that fish ascend to the fresh water, in which they live till they are seized with the migratory instinct. The parentage of the whitebait will be discovered in the sea, and the changes undergone by fish during their growth are so varied and curious that it would be difficult to predict what the little whitebait may turn out to be—whiting perhaps! After being told that the silver eel is the produce of a black beetle, and knowing that a tadpole is an infantile frog, and that the zœa ultimately becomes a crab, we need not wonder if we are some day told that whitebait becomes in time metamorphosed into some other entirely different fish!