116 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 
dreary limits in vain instinctive quest of food. If it be true, 
as is believed from their superior proportion of brain, that 
these carp possess higher intelligence than others of the lower 
vertebrate animals, what must their feelings be towards the 
superior vertebrates who come and smack and guzzle and 
cackle in the presence of victims slowly dying of starvation? 
Yes, dying of starvation! for although gold-fish, like others 
of the class, possess great power of abstinence, there must be 
a limit to that power. Nutriment is as essential to them as 
to other organisms ; deprived of that, the vital spark must 
flicker out, after what degree of suffering we do not know. 
The cruelty of keeping live animals under these conditions 
is not one whit less real because it is founded on ignorance. 
I am the last to doubt the genuine desire of people in general 
to make their pets happy ; but for Christ’s gentle sake let 
them begin by taking the trouble to acquire the rudiments 
of knowledge in what the welfare of these pets consists ! 
In order to impress, if possible, the evil that we sometimes 
inflict upon our fellow-creatures out of sheer ignorance or 
want of imagination, let me describe something that came 
under my notice some years ago, involving suffering of an 
acute kind, little suspected by people who shudder at the idea 
of skinning eels alive. 
It occurred at a city banquet on that scale which satisfies 
a healthy appetite by the end of the fish course, but which 
requires the successive acceptance or rejection of a long series 
of superfluous meats throughout the greater part of a summer 
evening, to the detriment alike of the complexions and con- 
stitutions of the feasters. Well, the table was beautifully 
decked with flowers, and a novel feature had been introduced 
into the decoration, whereof the caterer was not a little proud. 
Bowls of gold-fish stood at intervals into each of which had been 
cunningly introduced an electric burner, to show off the beauty 
of the captives. Probably the fish had been kept fasting ever 
since they had been shipped off from Portugal to Leadenhall 
