that most respectable authority, Professor
Seeley.) Still, in spite of the enormous quantity killed, there is no
danger of any falling off in the supply for the future, for every fish
lays from two to three million eggs, each of which, as caviare eaters
well know, is quite big enough to be distinctly seen with the naked eye
in the finished product. The best caviare is simply bottled exactly as
found, with the addition merely of a little salt. No man of taste can
pretend to like the nasty sun-dried sort, in which the individual eggs
are reduced to a kind of black pulp, and pressed hard with the feet
into doubtful barrels.

In conclusion, let me add one word of warning as to certain popular
errors about the young fry of sundry well-known species. Nothing is
more common than to hear it asserted that sprats are only immature
herring. This is a complete mistake. Believe it not. Sprats are a very
distinct species of the herring genus, and they never grow much bigger
than when they appear, _broches_, at table. The largest adult sprat
measures only six inches, while full-grown herring may attain as much
as fifteen. Moreover, herring have teeth on the palate, always wanting
in sprats, by which means the species may be readily distinguished at
all ages. When in doubt, therefore, do not play trumps, but examine the
palate. On the other hand, whitebait, long supposed to be a distinct
species, has now been proved by Dr. Guenther, the greatest of
ichthyologists, to consist chiefly of the fry or young of herring. To
complete our discomfiture, the same eminent authority has also shown
that the pilchard and the sardine, which we thought so unlike, are one
and the same fish, called by different names according as he is caught
off the Cornish coast or in Breton, Portuguese, or Mediterranean
waters. Such aliases are by no means uncommon among his class. To say
the plain truth, fish are the most variable and ill-defined of animals;
they differ so much in different habitats, so many hybrids occur
between them, and varieties merge so readily by imperceptible stages
into one another, that only an expert can decide in doubtful cases--and
every expert carefully reverses the last man's opinion. Let us at least
be thankful that whitebait by any other name would eat as nice; that
science has not a single whisper to breathe against their connection
with lemon; and that whether they are really the young of _Clupea
harengus_ or not, the supply at Bill