368 NATURAL HISTORY 



the bowl is hung ; especially when they have been mo- 

 tionless, and are perhaps asleep. As fishes have no 

 eyelids, it is not easy to discern when they are sleeping 

 or not, because their eyes are always open. 



Nothing can be more amusing than a glass bowl con- 

 taining such fishes : the double refractions of the glass 

 and water represent them, when moving, in a shifting 

 and changeable variety of dimensions, shades, and 

 colours; while the two mediums, assisted by the con- 

 cavo-convex shape of the vessel, magnify and distort 

 them vastly; not to mention that the introduction of 

 another element and its inhabitants into our parlours 

 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 2 . Linnaeus ranks this species of fish 

 under the genus of Cyprinus, or carp, and calls it Cypri- 

 nus auratus. 



Some people exhibit this sort of fish in a very fanciful 



a What Mr. White has remarked of the fishes of Japan thriving in our 

 climate, is true also of the plants ; the trees and shrubs brought from the 

 Japanese islands bearing our winters, and growing freely ; as for instance, 

 that beautiful tree, the gingko, now called by Dr. Smith the Salisburia ; 

 and the no less beautiful and scarce Sophora Japonica ; the finest speci- 

 mens of which trees now in England are probably in the curious garden 

 of John Orde, Esq. at Fulham. As I am on this subject, I will mention 

 that the garden belonging to the Palace of the Bishop of London at Ful- 

 ham, the earliest receptacle of scarce and foreign trees in this country, 

 is now almost worn out. Not above twelve of the original trees could be 

 found in the survey made in 1793. I remarked in 1811, that some of these 

 were gone, but the pinaster and the ilex remain. MITFOKD. 



To those who cultivate aquatic plants in the stove, it may be useful to 

 know that the little fishes called thornbacks or sticklebacks, Gasterostei, 

 will live in a high temperature in which minnows would perish immedi- 

 ately, and that they are very serviceable in destroying the small insects 

 that feed on the fibres of plants under the water. They are singularly 

 pugnacious, and in a pretty large vessel or small cistern the strongest 

 fish will persecute his kind, and not tolerate the presence of another indi- 

 vidual of his own species. When hungry they are so bold that they will 

 bite at a pencil, or even at the finger if held in the water. I have kept 

 one for two or three years in the stove with Nymphcca cttrulea. W. H. 



