112 NATURALIST'S CABINET. 



Brilliant colours liveliness. 



are seen round the orifices, that serve them as 

 organs of hearing, and the males by having these 

 spots much brighter. The nostrils c*f the gold 

 fish are double, wide, and placed near the eyes. 

 The body is covered with large scales, and the 

 tail is forked; but there is no fish in which the 

 fins vary so much. The colour of the gold fish 

 changes with age. In the first years it is gene- 

 rally black, a colour very rardy found among the 

 inhabitants of the watery element. In the course 

 of a few years more, silver spots make their ap- 

 pearance, and gradually increase till they cover 

 the whole body. It then turns red, and becomes 

 more beautiful the older it grows. Sometimes, 

 indeed, it turns red before it assumes the silvery 

 hue, and in some instances the fish is red from 

 the very first. 



These fish are natives of a lake not far from 

 the high mountain of Tsienking, near the city 

 of Tchangou, situated in the province of Che 

 Kiang, in China, in about thirty degrees twenty 

 three minutes of north latitude. From this place 

 they were transported to the other provinces of 

 that empire, to Japan, and at length to Europe. 

 In China and Japan, every person of fashion 

 keeps them for ornament, cither in the basins 

 which decorate the courts of their houses, or in 

 porcelain vases. The beauty of their colours, 

 arid the liveliness of their motions, afford much 

 entertainment, particularly to the ladies, whose 

 pleasures, by reason of the cruel policy of that 

 3 



