Page:The Book of the Aquarium and Water Cabinet.djvu/46

36 The trade has been so long established that a modern gold fish is truly a manufactured article, and the patterns vary from high class beauty to very decided deformity. Domesticated creatures are all liable to vary from their original type, but in the gold carp this variation proceeds to an extent not observed in any other animal which man has taken under his care. Their colours are as various as their forms; some have stumps instead of dorsal fins, with perhaps tails as large as their bodies; some have triple-forked tails, and perhaps no trace of a dorsal fin at all, and in purchasing, it is as necessary to look to the structure and outline of the fish as to its colours, or, on after inspection, the purchaser may find himself in possession of creatures as bright as morning sunshine, but in form as ugly as toads. There is no better food for gold fish than the crumb of bread. Many writers condemn this; I can only say that they thrive for years upon it, but if more be given at a time than the fish can eat, it soon renders the water impure and does mischief.

Cyprinus Brama, the common bream, is a fish of bold outline and pleasing habit. The depth from the dorsal to the ventral fin is nearly equal to the length of the body, and justifies the comparison applied to a high-shouldered biped, “backed like a bream.” There is a prettier species called the Cyprinus Buggenhagi, Pomeranian Bream, a specimen of which was lately supplied me, with a parcel of other fish, by Mr. Hall, the intelligent naturalist, of the City Road.

C. Leucisus, the dace, C. rutilus, the roach, and C. alburnus, the bleak, may be classed together, as fishes