ii6 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 



