110 ANGLING. 



ing and desirable of our pets/'* According to Mr. 

 Jesse, they even maintain an affection for each 

 other. In confinement they may be fed with fine 

 crumbs of bread, small worms, flies, yolks of eggs 

 dried and reduced to powder, and various other 

 articles. We usually feed our own with manna 

 croup. Many people, however, even humane-minded 

 philanthropists, and M. S. P. C. A.'s,~f- never give 

 them any food at all. We ourselves once heard a 

 clergyman say, that they did not require to be fed, 

 because nature had endowed them with the power 

 " of decomposing oxygen." If the stomach is 

 satisfied by this theory, the gills will assuredly 

 make no objection to it. 



As this brilliant creature is not an angler's fish, 

 we scarcely know why we have been led to name it 

 here. Perhaps, because at this moment it ever and 

 anon is flashing its golden gleams upon us from a 

 glassy globe upon that marble slab between our 

 windows. Let us enliven our own dull prose by 

 now inserting the great Laker's rhymes : 



Type of a sunny human breast 



Is your transparent cell, 

 Where fear is but a transient guest, 



No sullen humours dwell ; 

 Where sensitive of every ray 



That smites this tiny sea, 

 Your scaly panoplies repay 



The loan with usury. 



How beautiful ! Yet none knows why 

 This ever-graceful change, 



* Magazine of Natural History, vol. iii. p. 478. 



"\" Members of societies for preventing cruelty to animals. 



