The Chivin, Dace, Roach, Cousin Trout, or whatever else it is called, Leuciscus pulchellus, white and red, always an unexpected prize, which, however, any angler is glad to hook for its rarity.  A name that reminds us of many an unsuccessful ramble by swift streams, when the wind rose to disappoint the fisher.  It is commonly a silvery soft-scaled fish, of graceful, scholarlike, and classical look, like many a picture in an English book.  It loves a swift current and a sandy bottom, and bites inadvertently, yet not without appetite for the bait.  The minnows are used as bait for pickerel in the winter.  The red chivin, according to some, is still the same fish, only older, or with its tints deepened as they think by the darker water it inhabits, as the red clouds swim in the twilight atmosphere.  He who has not hooked the red chivin is not yet a complete angler.  Other fishes, methinks, are slightly amphibious, but this is a denizen of the water wholly.  The cork goes dancing down the swift-rushing stream, amid the weeds and sands, when suddenly, by a coincidence never to be remembered, emerges this fabulous inhabitant of another element, a thing heard of but not seen, as if it were the instant creation of an eddy, a true product of the running stream.  And this bright cupreous dolphin was spawned and has passed its life beneath the level of your feet in your native fields.  Fishes too, as well as birds and clouds, derive their armor from the mine.  I have heard of mackerel visiting the copper banks at a particular season; this fish, perchance, has its habitat in the Coppermine River.  I have caught white chivin of great size in the Aboljacknagesic, where it empties into the Penobscot, at the base of Mount Ktaadn, but no red ones there.  The latter variety seems not to have been sufficiently observed.

The Dace, Leuciscus argenteus, is a slight silvery minnow, found generally in the middle of the stream, where the current is most rapid, and frequently confounded with the last named.

The Shiner, Leuciscus crysoleucas, is a soft-scaled and tender fish, the victim of its stronger neighbors, found in all places, deep and shallow, clear and turbid; generally the first nibbler at the bait, but, with its small mouth and nibbling propensities, not easily caught.  It is a gold or silver bit that passes current in the river, its limber tail dimpling the surface in sport or flight.  I have seen the fry, when frightened by something thrown into the water, leap out by dozens, together with the dace, and wreck themselves upon a floating plank.  It is the little light-infant of the river, with body armor of gold or silver spangles, slipping, gliding its life through with a quirk of the tail, half in the water, half in the air, upward and ever upward with flitting fin to more crystalline tides, yet still abreast of us dwellers on the bank.  It is almost dissolved by the summer heats.  A slighter and lighter colored shiner is found in one of our ponds.