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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 Billingsgate shows no symptom of falling short of the demand.