Page:The Book of the Aquarium and Water Cabinet.djvu/53

Rh beginner to be careful, or he may regret having made their acquaintance. They are all savages, untameable savages, that delight in destruction, even if they cannot eat what they destroy. They will attack anything, and, with their spiny armour, dare the stoutest to retaliate upon their mischief-making pertinacity. In fact, they pass all their time in worrying the more peaceful members of the aquarium; and any one who has a few months’ experience of them, will consider them the savagest of imps.

I have tried them on several occasions, and found them at spawning time more savage than usual; but at all other times savage enough. My favourite Prussian carp, that love me as I love them, that come when I call them, that hurry to the side when I fillip the glass with my finger-nail, that watch me with all their eyes when I sit in the room with them, and that feed from my hand as a dog would, show at the tips of their pretty tails the sanguinary signs of gasterostean vengeance. Their transparent tails are ragged through the attacks of those sharp-toothed savages, and more than one has succumbed to their persevering spite since my recent trial of them under the persuasion of a little friend who begged me to put in some “robins” he had caught at the brook. “Robins,” indeed, the red jaws of G. aculeatus are suggestive of his blood-thirsty propensities, and he now does penance with a dozen of his kindred in a glass jar of Callitriche autumnalis. With tench, gudgeons, and minnows they do better, but they are very annoying to carp of all kinds.