ABOUT WHITEBAIT.

Grey River Argus, 5 July 1907, Page 4

ABOUT WHITEBAIT.

Nothing is safe from the brutal, bacteroilogist in these days. Oysters and shrimps and pipis have all fallen under .the Iban, and one would have supposed the dainty whitebait exempt, that tempting dleSicacy dustell with cayenne and dressed with lemon slices The Chief .Health Officer of London City, however,- has decided that whitebait is not the pure little fish it is believed to be. 'He descended recently on various London restaurants, collected samples, and carried them, off to his laboratory, where he put them under his mdscroscopes. -Every one of the samples, :hc reports, was found to be stuffed full of the bacilli that abound in sc.wn.fje*. Of course, 'his condemnation applies only to London supplies. Other supplies have to be tested separately, and we havte no doubt that our little fish would come through such an ordeal well. (Probable 'they .would have nothing more deadly in their little -insides than "plumatella repena;" Moreover, as white-' ■bait is not eaten raw, '.the, bacilli are presumably rendered innocuous. It is strange that scientists'^ should have ■taken so long to ascertain precisely the origin of /the little dainties. At (Home . they were described variously as the young of shad, herrings, sprats and 'bleak. They were created into new species, and a Frenchman even made a new genus to hold them. The author of the "Catalogue of Fishes in the ißritijslh 1 Museum declared positively that they Avere the young of the herring, and the theory now h- lding favour is that the shoals are part sprat, part herring. As a herring will deposit as many as 30,000 eggs in a season, the abundance of .whitebait es easily explained. Of course, as a London writer admits, is .it uYi c to pretend they would suffer in wholesome ness from the pollution of „ H«c r \ a which they chanced to be but "at their "best they are creature of the tide-way, silvery hosts haunting die sand•hands and living on the harmless infusoria of blue water."