NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 21$ 



of another element and its inhabitants into our parlors engages 

 the fancy in a very agreeable manner. 



Gold and silver fishes, though originally natives of China 

 and Japan, yet are become so well reconciled to our climate 

 as to thrive and multiply very fast in our ponds and stews. 

 Linnaeus ranks this species of fish under the genus of Cypri- 

 mis, or carp, and calls it Cyprimts auratus. 



Some people exhibit this sort of fish in a very fanciful 

 way ; for they cause a glass bowl to be blown with a large 

 hollow space within, that does not communicate with it. In 

 this cavity they put a bird occasionally ; so that you may see 

 a goldfinch or a linnet hopping as it were in the midst of the 

 water, and the fishes swimming in a circle round it. The 

 simple exhibition of the fishes is agreeable and pleasant ; but 

 in so complicated a way becomes whimsical and unnatural, 

 and liable to the objection due to him, 



" Qui variare cupit rem prodigialiter unam." 



I am, etc. 

 NOTES 



1 Only fish which are very heavy in the head and shoulders die in the 

 way described by White. Other fish, such as trout, swim with their noses 

 at the surface of the water, standing on their tails, as it were, until they 

 turn, bellies up, and die. G. C. D. 



2 In favorable waters the goldfish breeds very fast, and grows to a large 

 size. I know a small pond which is kept warm by waste water from the 

 boilers of an adjoining paper-mill, where these fish are in incredible num- 

 bers for so small a space, and grow to four or five pounds in weight. 



LETTER LV 



October loth, 1781. 



DEAR SIR, I think I have observed before that much of 

 the most considerable part of the house-martins withdraw 

 from hence about the first week in October ; but that some, 

 the latter broods I am now convinced, linger on till towards 

 the middle of that month ; and that at times, once perhaps 

 in two or three years, a flight, for one day only, has shown 

 itself in the first week in November. 



Having taken notice, in October 1780, that the last flight 



