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Rh confinement. It is, however, more probable that these colours have been intensified through artificial selection, as this species has been carefully bred in China from a remote period. Under natural conditions it does not seem probable that beings so highly organised as fishes, and which live under such complex relations, should become brilliantly coloured without suffering some evil or receiving some benefit from so great a change, and consequently without the intervention of natural selection.

What, then, are we to conclude in regard to the many fishes, both sexes of which are splendidly coloured? Mr. Wallace believes that the species which frequent reefs, where corals and other brightly-coloured organisms abound, are brightly coloured in order to escape detection by their enemies; but according to my recollection they were thus rendered highly conspicuous. In the fresh-waters of the tropics there are no brilliantly-coloured corals or other organisms for the fishes to resemble; yet many species in the Amazons are beautifully coloured, and many of the carnivorous Cyprinidæ in India are ornamented with "bright longitudinal lines of various tints." Mr. M'Clelland, in describing these fishes, goes so far as to suppose that the peculiar brilliancy of their colours" serves as "a better mark for king-fishers, terns, and other birds which are destined to keep the number of these fishes in check;" but at the present day few naturalists will admit that any animal has been made conspicuous as an aid to its own destruction. It is possible that certain fishes may have been rendered conspicuous in order to warn birds and beasts of prey that they were unpalatable, as explained when treating of caterpillars; but it is not, I believe, known that any fish, at least any fresh-water fish, is rejected from being distasteful to fish-devouring animals. On the whole, the most probable view in regard to the fishes, of which both sexes are brilliantly coloured, is that their colours were acquired by the males as a sexual ornament, and were transferred equally, or nearly so, to the other sex.