320 CYPRINIDiE. 



whether the sudden privation of the dorsal fin would produce 

 any more 'apparent inconvenience than was observable in the 

 specimen just referred to. 



For this purpose I attended at the Zoological Society's 

 Garden a short time before the hour at which the Otter was fed 

 daily with his accustomed meal of living fish. Nine or ten 

 Roach and Dace were placed with plenty of water in a large 

 tub of three feet diameter. Five or six of these fish I took 

 from the tub one after another, and with a pair of scissors 

 cut off the whole of the dorsal fin close to the back, return- 

 ing each fish to the water. They were but little or scarcely 

 at all affected, and each fish appeared to preserve its perpen- 

 dicular position, or to ascend or descend in the water with 

 the same ease and certainty as before the privation ; the 

 mutilated, swimming among the unmutilated, seemed to 

 possess the same powers. I did not carry the experiment 

 beyond ascertaining this point, and in a few minutes the 

 fish were consigned to the Otter. 



When Gold-fish breed in ponds or tanks under favourable 

 circumstances, the young attain the length of five inches in 

 the first twelve months, but their growth afterwards is much 

 less rapid. I have not seen any specimen that exceeded 

 ten inches in length. The young are dark-coloured at first, 

 almost black, changing more or less rapidly according to 

 constitutional power. 



