AQUARIUM 



461 



Are Present Standards in Goldfish 

 Desirable? 



BY WILLIAM T. INNES, PHILADELPHIA, PA. 



That the general quality of goldfish 

 now bred and shown is distinctly in- 

 ferior to the exhibitions of several years 

 ago is a fact only too plain to those in 

 a position to judge. There are several 

 causes for this, one of the most im- 

 portant being the present disregard of 

 desirable, consistent and definite breed- 

 ing standards. We are trying too many 

 things and not concentrating on any- 

 thing in particular. In any field of en- 

 deavor this makes poor results. We 

 are lacking in clearly fixed and prac- 

 tical ideals. The final result in all 

 kinds of breeding, from plants to man, 

 is the bringing into existence ot tne 

 ideals of the breeder, but as soon as 

 ideals go, results deteriorate. The 

 Chinese and the Japanese, not only for 

 a lifetime, but for generations, father 

 to son, bred to definite standards. That 

 accounts for their wonderful success in 

 developing the common red carp up 

 to the goldfish of to-day with all its 

 great variety of form and color. 



The Chinese are a people fond of the 

 grotesque — a kind of beauty in ugli- 

 ness. They also have a great love of 

 color. These characteristics naturally 

 led them to breed goldfish grotesque 

 in form and extraordinary in color — 

 color which we seldom if ever see here. 

 An extremely fine importation by a 

 dealer in this city some fifteen years 

 ago gives us a hint of what the Chinese 

 have cultivated in eyes and color, for 

 of course it is the telescope goldfish 

 to which I refer. 



We really have great opportunities 

 in breeding when it is considered that 

 we have at our command the results 

 of centuries of patient labor and study 



on the part of the Orientals. It should 

 be for us to go on and improve the 

 breed or at least to equal the best that 

 has been done. 



Now we come to the failure of the 

 American properly to grasp what 

 might be called the artistic conception 

 of the telescope fish. As I have said 

 before, the idea is one of the grotesque 

 — a kind of hideous urchin of the 

 aquarium, beautiful in its ugliness, if 

 you are trained to see it in that way. 

 Nine people out of ten on first seeing 

 telescopes are horrified. The telescope 

 true to these lines has a rather long 

 body, medium or rather short fin de- 

 velopment, double anals. divided caudal 

 fin, or tail, immensely over-developed 

 eyes, colors black, bright red or highly 

 mottled. Of recent years we Americans 

 have been trying to give to the tele- 

 scope a quality entirely foreign to it 

 and absolutely inconsistent with its 

 style. This is the quality of elegance. 

 It is right to breed for elegance in the 

 right place, as we shall see later, but 

 the telescope fish is in style the exact 

 opposite of the elegant and any effort 

 to mingle such opposites can only give 

 results that are neither one thing nor 

 the other. 



This changing of the telescope has 

 been in breeding for large fin develop- 

 ment and short body — two points clear- 

 ly belonging to the ideas of grace and 

 beauty. In working for these points 

 eyes and particularly color have fallen 

 by the wayside. We have also pro- 

 duced a fish that has everything against 

 it physically. The Chinese telescope 

 with its great, bulging, nearsighted 

 eyes, combined with the weakening in- 

 fluence of inbreeding, had trouble 

 enough to keep alive. But combine 

 with these disadvantages those of over- 



