mitsukuri] GOLD-FISHES IX JAPAN 17 



One can easily know when he has finished or gotten away from the 

 subject under consideration, for whatever will help pupils in under- 

 standing how to raise and handle strawberries is legitimate work. 

 However, not all the points indicated for study are of equal relative 

 value. One needs to use his judgment in determining relative worth. 

 Further, the work indicated might be the most formal and bookish 

 imaginable, if pupils were not so situated that they could carry out 

 into life the ideas suggested by their study. In other words the 

 human interest might be at a low ebb as far as strawberries were con- 

 cerned. A country school would be an ideal place for such a topic. 

 In all of our smaller towns and villages this would afford good 

 material for nature-study. In our larger cities much of the work 

 suggested would be inappropriate because there are as a rule no 

 places for strawberry patches. It would be so much formal work 

 tacked on. 



GOLD-FISHES IN JAPAN 



BY K. MITSUKURI 



Professor of Zoology, Imperial University 



[Editorial Note — Professor Mitsukuri read before the International Congress 

 of Arts and Sciences, held at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Mo., 

 August 21-25, 1904, a paper on "The Cultivation of Marine and Fresh-water 

 Animals in Japan." This paper is now printed in the 1907 Bulletin of the U. S. 

 Bureau of Fisheries. The animals specially mentioned are : snapping turtle, 

 gold-fish, carp, eel, gray mullet, salmon and trout, oyster, pearl oyster, and clams. 

 The cultivation of all these has been developed with great commercial success. 

 The chapter on gold-fish has many points of interest for nature-study in America, 

 because these fishes are so common in aquaria in our schools and homes. Since 

 the original report is not available for wide distribution, we reprint some of the 

 interesting paragraphs concerning gold-fishes.] 



The gold-fish is the characteristically oriental domesticated fish. 

 Its beautiful bright coloration and graceful form, with long, flowing 

 fins, appeal most strongly to one's sense of the beautiful. It also is 

 intensely interesting from the scientific standpoint, and proves a 

 source of endless surprises to the biologist, for it is a plastic material 

 with which skillful breeding can, within certain limits, do almost any- 

 thing. Our gold-fish breeder seems to have understood the principle 

 of " breeding to a point " to perfection, and I have often been inter- 

 ested in hearing some of them talk in a way which reminded me of 

 passages in the "Origin of the Species " or other Darwinian writ- 

 ings. This must be considered remarkable, for these breeders are, 



