Gold and silver fishes, though originally natives of China and Japan, yet are become so well reconciled to our climate as to thrive and multiply very fast in our ponds and stews. Linnæus ranks this species of fish under the genus of Cyprinus, or carp, and calls it Cyprinus auratus.
Some people exhibit this sort of fish in a very fanciful way; for they cause a glass bowl to be blown with a large hollow space within, that does not communicate with it. In this cavity they put a bird occasionally; so that you may see a goldfinch or a linnet hopping as it were in the midst of the water, and the fishes swimming in a circle round it. The simple exhibition of the fishes is agreeable and pleasant; but in so complicated a way becomes whimsical and unnatural, and liable to the objection due to him,
"Qui variare cupit rem prodigialitèr unam."
I am, etc.
NOTE TO LETTER LIV.
1 Only fish which are very heavy in the head and shoulders die in the way described by White. Other fish, such as trout, swim with their noses at the surface of the water, standing on their tails, as it were, until they turn, bellies up, and die.
2 In favourable waters the gold-fish breeds very fast, and grows to a large size. I know a small pond which is kept warm by waste water from the boilers of an adjoining paper-mill, where these fish are in incredible numbers for so small a space, and grow to four or five pounds in weight. It is excellent sport angling for the larger ones. They take paste freely, and fight well.
LETTER LIV.
Selborne, October 10th, 1781.
Dear Sir,—I think I have observed before that much of the most considerable part of the house-martins withdraw from hence about the first week in October; but that some, the latter broods I am now convinced, linger on till towards the middle of that month; and that at times, once perhaps in two or three years,
