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This fish takes its name from its head, not only in our own but in other languages; we call it chub, according to Skinner, from the old English cop, a head; the French testard; the Italians, capitone.

It does not grow to a large size; we have known some that weighed above five pounds, but Salvianus speaks of others that were eight or nine pounds in weight. The body is oblong, rather round, and of a pretty equal thickness the greatest part of the way; the scales are large.

The irides silvery; the cheeks of the same colour: the head and back of a deep dusky green; the sides silvery, but in the summer yellow; the belly white; the pectoral fins of pale yellow; the ventral and anal fins red; the tail a little 'forked, of a brownish hue, but tinged with blue at the end.

35. The BLEAK.

The taking of these Ausonius lets us know was the sport of children,

our

ALBURNOS prædam puerilibus hamis, They are very common in many of rivers, and keep together in large shoals. These fish seem at certain seasons to be in great agonies; they tumble about near the surface of the water, and are incapable of swimming far from the place, but in about two hours recover, and disappear. Fish thus affected, the Thames fishermen call mad bleaks. They seem to be troubled with a species of gordius or hair worm, of the same kind with those which Aristotle says that the ballerus, and tillo are infested with, which torments them so that they rise to the surface of the water, and then die.

Artificial pearls are made with the scales of this fish, and we think of the

dace. They are beat into a fine powder, then diluted with water, and introduced into a thin glass bubble, which is after wards filled with wax. The French were the inventors of this art. Doctor Lister+ tells, us that when he was at Paris a certain artist used in one winter thirty hampers full of fish in this manufacture.

The bleak seldom exceeds five or six inches in length; their body is slender, greatly compressed sideways, not unlike that of a sprat.

The eyes are large; the irides of a pale yellow; the under jaw the longest : the lateral line crooked; the gills silvery;

*Hist. an. lib. viii. c. 20.
Journey to Paris, 142.

the back green; the sides and belly sil very; the fins pellucid; the scales fall off very easily; the tail much forked.

§ 36. The WHite Bait. During the month of July there appear in the Thames, near Blackwall and Greenwhich, innumerable multitudes of small fish, which are known to the Londoners by the name of White Bait. They are esteemed very delicious when fried with fine flour, and occasion during the season a vast resort of the lower orders of epicures to the taverns contiguous to the places they are taken at.

There are various conjectures about this species, but all terminate in a suppɔsition that they are the fry of some fish; but few agree to which kind they owe their origin. Some attribute it to the shad, others to the sprat, the smelt, and the bleak. That they neither belong to the shad nor the sprat is very evident from the number of branchiostegous rays which in those are eight, in this only three. That they are not the young of smelts, is as clear, because they want the pinna adiposa, or rayless fin; and that they are not the offspring of the bleak, is extremely probable, since we never heard of the white bait being found in any other river, notwithstanding the bleak is very common in several of the British streams: but as the white bait bears greater similarity to this fish than to any other we have mentioned, we give it a place here form a distinct article of a fish which it as an appendage to the bleak, rather than is impossible to class with certainty.

It is evident that it is of the carp or cyprinus genus; it has only three bran chiostegous, and only one dorsal fin; and in respect to the form of the body, is compressed like that of the bleak.

Its usual length is two inches: the under jaw is the longest; the irides silvery, the pupil black; the dorsal fin is placed nearer to the head than to the tail, and consists of about fourteen rays; the side line is strait; the tail forked, the tips black.

The head, sides, and belly, are silvery; the back tinged with green.

$ 37. The MINOW. This beautiful fish is frequent in many of our small gravelly streams, where they keep in shoals.

scales being extremely small. It seldom The body is slender and smooth, the exceeds three inches in length.

The

The lateral line is of a golden colour; the back flat, and of a deep olive: the sides and belly vary greatly in different fish; in a few are of a rich crimson, in others bluish, in others white. The tail is forked, and marked near the base with a dusky spot.

38. The GOLD FISH.

These fish are now quite naturalized in this country, and breed as freely in the open waters as the common carp.

They were first introduced into Eng land about the year 1691, but were not generally known till 1728, when a great and presented number were brought over, first to Sir Matthew Dekker, and by him circulated round the nighbourhood of London, from whence they have been distributed to most parts of the country.

In China the most beautiful kinds are

taken in a small lake in the province of
Che-Kyang. Every person of fashion
keeps them for amusement, either in por-
celaine vessels, or in the small basons
that decorate the courts of the Chinese
The beauty of their colours and
'their lively motions give great entertain-
ment, especially to the ladies, whose plea-

houses.

sures, by reason of the cruel policy of that
country, are extremely limited.

In form of the body they bear a great
resemblance to a carp. They have been
known in this Island to arrive at the
length of eight inches; in their native
place they are said to grow to the size
of our largest herring.

The nostrils are tubular, and form a sort of appendage above the nose: the dorsal fin and the tail vary greatly in shape: the tail is naturally bifid, but in

many

is trifid, and in some even quadrifid: the anal fins are the strongest characters of this species, being placed not behind one another, like those of other fish, but opposite each other like the ven

tral fins.

The colours vary greatly; some are marked with a fine blue, with brown, with bright silver; but the general predominant colour is gold, of a most amazing splendor: but their colour and form need not be dwelt on, since those who want

opportunity of seeing the living fish, may
survey them expressed in the most anima-
ted manner, in the words of our ingenious
and honest friend Mr. George Ed-
Pennant.
wards.
*Du Halde, 316.

A NEW CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE of remarkable Events, Discoveries aud Inventions.

Also, the Era, the Country, and Writings, of learned Men.

The whole comprehending in one View, the Analysis or Outlines of General History from the Creation to the present Time.

Before

Christ.

4004 THE creation of the world, and Adam and Eve.

4003 The birth of Cain, the first who was born of a woman.

3017 Enoch, for his picty, is translated into Heaven.

2348 The old world is destroyed by a deluge which continued 377 days.

2247 The tower of Babel is built about this time by Noah's posterity, upon which God miraculously confounds their language, and thus disperses them into different nations.

About the same time Noah, is with great probability, supposed to have parted from his rebellious offspring, and to have led a colony of some of the more tractable into the East, and there either he or one his successors to have founded the ancient Chinese monarchy.

2234 The celestial observations are begun at Babylon the city which first gave birth to learning and the sciences.

2188 Misraim

2188 Misraim the son of Ham, founds the kingdom of Egypt, which lasted 1663 years, down to the conquest of Cambyses, in 525 before Christ.

2059 Ninus, the son of Belus, founds the kingdom of Assyria, which lasted above 1000 years, and out of its ruins were formed the Assyrians of Babylon, those of Nineveh, and the kingdom of the Medes.

1921 The covenant of God made with Abram, when he leaves Haran to go into Canaan, which begins the 430 years of sojourning.

1897 The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed for their wickedness by fire from Heaven.

1856 The kingdom of Argos, in Greece, begins under Inachus.

1822 Memnon, the Egyptian, invents the letters.

1715 Prometheus first struck fire from flints.

1635 Joseph dies in Egypt, which concludes the book of Genesis, containing a period of 2369 years.

1574 Aaron born in Egypt: 1490, appointed by God first high priest of the Israel

ites.

1571 Moses, brother to Aaron, born in Egypt, and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter, who educates him in all the learning of the Egyptians.

1556 Cecrops brings a colony of Saites from Egypt into Attica, and begins the kingdom of Athens in Greece.

1546 Scamander comes from Crete into Phrygia, and begins the kingdom of Troy. 1493 Cadmus carried the Phenician letters into Greece, and built the citadel at Thebes.

1191 Moses performs a number of miracles in Egypt, and departs from that kingdom, together with 600,000 Israelites, besides children: which completed the 430 years of sojourning. They miraculously pass through the Red Sea, and come to the desert of Sinai, where Moses receives from God, and delivers to the people, the Ten Commandments, and the other laws, and sets up the tabernacle, and in it the ark of the covenant.

1485 The first ship that appeared in Greece, was brought from Egypt by Danaus, who arrived at Rhodes, and brought with him his fifty daughters.

1453 The first Olympic games celebrated at Olympia, in Greece.

1452 The Pentateuch, or five first books of Moses, are written in the land of Moab, where he died the year following, aged 110.

1451 The Israelites, after sojourning in the wilderness forty years, are led under Joshua into the land of Canaan, where they fix themselves, after having subdued the natives: and the period of the sabbatical year commences.

1406 Iron is found in Greece from the accidental burning of the woods. 1198 The rape of Helen by Paris, which, in 1193, gave rise to the Trojan war, and siege of Troy by the Greeks, which continued ten years, when that city was taken and burnt.

1048 David is sole king of Israel.

1004 The Temple is solemnly dedicated by Solomon.

896 Elijah the prophet is translated to Heaven.

894 Money first made of gold and silver at Argos.

869 The city of Carthage, in Africa, founded by queen Dido.

824 The kingdom of Macedon begins.

753 Æra of the building of Rome in Italy, by Romulus, first king of the Romans 720 Samaria taken, after three years siege, and the kingdom of Israel finished by Salmanasar, king of Assyria, who carries the ten tribes into captivity. The first eclipse of the moon on record.

658 Byzantium (now Constantinople) built by a colony of Athenians. 604 By order of Necho, king of Egypt, some Phoenicians sailed from the Red Sea round Africa, and returned by the Mediterranean.

600 Thales, of Miletus, travels into Egypt, consults the priests of Memphis, acquires the knowledge of geometry, astronomy, and philosophy; returns to Greece, calculates eclipses, gives general notions of the universe, and maintains that one Supreme Intelligence regulates all its motions.

600 Maps,

600 Maps, globes, and the signs of the Zodiac, invented by Anaximander, the scholar of Thales.

597 Jehoiakin, king of Judah, is carried away captive, by Nebuchadnezzar, to

Babylon.

587 The city of Jerusalem taken after a siege of eighteen months. 562 The first comedy at Athens acted upon a moveable scaffold.

559 Cyrus the first king of Persia.

538 The kingdom of Babylon finished; that city being taken by Cyrus, who in 536, issues an edict for the return of the Jews.

534 The first tragedy was acted at Athens, on a waggon, by Thespis

526 Learning is greatly encouraged at Athens, and a public library first founded. 515 The second Temple at Jerusalem is finished under Darius.

509 Tarquin the seventh and last king of the Romans is expelled, and Rome is governed by two consuls, and other republican magistrates, till the battle of Pharsalia, being a space of 461 years.

504 Sardis taken and burnt by the Athenians, which gave occasion to the Persian invasion of Greece.

486 Eschylus, the Greek poet, first gains the prize of tragedy.

481 Xerxes the Great, king of Persia, begins his expedition against Greece.

458 Ezra is sent from Babylon to Jerusalem, with the captive Jews, and the vessels of gold and silver, &c. being seventy weeks of years, or 490 years before the crucifixion of our Saviour.

454 The Romans send to Athens for Solon's laws.

451 The Decemvirs created at Rome, and the laws of the twelve tables compiled and ratified.

430 The history of the Old Testament finishes about this time.

Malachi the last of the prophets.

400 Socrates the founder of moral philosophy among the Greeks, believes the immortality of the soul, and a state of rewards and punishments, for which, and other sublime doctrines, he is put to death by the Athenians, who soon after repent, and erect to his memory a statue of brass.

331 Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, conquers Darius king of Persia, and other nations of Asia. 323, Dies at Babylon, and his empire is divided by his generals into four kingdoms.

285 Dionysius of Alexandria, began his astronomical æra, on Monday, June 26, being the first who found the exact solar year to consist of 365 days, 5 hours, and 49 minutes,

284 Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, employs seventy-two interpreters to translate the Old Testament into the Greek language, which is called the Septuagint.

269 The first coining of silver at Rome.

264 The first Punic war begins, and continues 23 years. The chronology of the

Arundelian marbles composed.

260 The Romans first concern themselves in naval affairs, and defeat the Carthagi

nians at sea.

237 Hamilcar the Carthaginian causes his son Hannibal, at nine years old, to swear eternal enmity to the Romans.

218 The second punic war begins, and continues 17 years. Hannibal passes the Alps, and defeats the Romans in several battles; but being amused by his women, does not improve his victories by the storming of Rome.

190 The first Roman army enters Asia, and from the spoils of Antiochus brings the Asiatic luxury first to Rome.

168 Perseus defeated by the Romans, which ends the Macedonian kingdom. 167 The first library erected at Rome, of books brought from Macedonia.

163 The Government of Judea under the Maccabees begins, and continues 126 years.

146 Carthage, the rival to Rome is razed to the ground by the Romans.

135 The history of the Apocrypha ends.

52 Julius Cæsar makes his first expedition into Britain.

47 The battle of Pharsalia between Cæsar and Pompey in which the latter is defeated.

The Alexandrian library, consisting of 400,000 valuable books, burnt by accident.

45 The war of Africa, in which Cato kills himself.

The solar year introduced by Cæsar.

44 Cæsar, the greatest of the Roman conquerors, after having fought fifty pitched battles, and slain 1,192,000 men, and overturned the liberties of his country, is killed in the senate-house.

35 The battle of Actium fought, in which Mark Antony and Cleopatra are totally defeated by Octavius, nephew to Julius Cæsar.

30 Alexandria, in Egypt, is taken by Octavius, upon which Antony and Cleopa tra put themselves to death, and Egypt is reduced to a Roman province. 27 Octavius by a decree of the senate, obtains the title of Augustus Cæsar, and an absolute exemption from the laws, and is properly the first Roman emperor. 8 Rome at this time is fifty miles in circumference, and contains 463,000 men fit to bear arms.

A. C.

12

27 33

The temple of Janus is shut by Augustus as an emblem of universal
JESUS CHRIST is born on Monday, December 25.

-disputes with the doctors in the temple;

-is baptized in the Wilderness by John;

peace, and

-is crucified on Friday, April 3, at 3 o'clock, P. M. His Resurrection on Sunday, April 5; his Ascension, Thursday May 14. 36 St. Paul converted.

39 St. Matthew writes his Gospel.

Pontius Pilate kills himself.

40 The name of Christians first given at Antioch to the followers of Christ. 43 Claudius Cæsar's expedition into Britain.

44 St Mark writes his Gospel.

49 London is founded by the Romans; 368, surrounded by ditto with a wall, some parts of which are still observable.

51 Caractacus, the British king, is carried in chains to Rome.

St. Luke writes his Gospel,

59 The emperor Nero puts his mother and brothers to death.

persecutes the Druids in Britain.

61 Boadicea, the British queen, defeats the Romans; but is conquered soon after by Suetonius, governor of Britain.

St. Paul is sent in bonds to Rome; writes his Epistles between 51 and 66. 52 The council of the Apostles at Jerusalem.

63 The Acts of the Apostles written.

Christianity is supposed to be introduced into Britain by St. Paul or some of his disciples, about this time.

64 Rome set on fire, and burned for six days; upon which began (under Nero) the first persecution against the Christians.

67 St. Peter and St. Paul put to death.

70 Whilst the factious Jews are destroying one another with mutual fury, Titus, the Roman general, takes Jerusalem, which is razed to the ground, and the plough made to pass over it.

83 The philosophers expelled Rome by Domitian.

85 Julius Agricola, Governor of South Britain, to protect the civilized Britons from the incursions of the Caledonians, builds a line of forts between the rivers Forth and Clyde, defeats the Caledonians under Galgacus on the Grampian hills; and first sails round Britain, which he discovers to be an island.

96 St. John the Evangelist wrote his revelation; his Gospel in 97. 121 The Caledonians reconquer from the Romans all the southern parts of Scot

land: upon which the emperor Adrian builds a wall between Newcastle and Carlisle; but this also proving ineffectual, Pollius Urbicus, the Roman general, about the year 144, repairs Agricola's forts, which he joins by a wall four yards thick.

35 The second Jewish war ends, when the were all banished Judæa.

139 Justin

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