[Three Hundred Animals Contents]
RESEMBLES the chub in its form, but is less and of a lighter colour; it is a gregarious fish, frequenting the same places, and remarkably prolific. The body seldom extends ten inches in length, and like the rest of the leather-mouth kind, it has no teeth in its jaw, but only in its throat, a curious contrivance which nature has thought proper to make use of to enable the fish more easily to apprehend its food, even at the moment that the throat is busy in the act of trituration. Its back is of a dusky colour, tinged with yellow and green, and the sides and belly of a silvery cast.
They are very lively creatures, and if kept in vivaries, may live a considerable time. It is of an elegant shape, and its rapid evolutions in the water are greatly facilitated by six oars of a proportionable extent and a dove-tail-shaped rudder at the end of the body.
