MOORLAND IDYLLS. 



was most sad to look at. As every one 

 knows, they breathe the oxygen dissolved 

 in water; and as hundreds of them were 

 confined in this Black Hole of Calcutta, the 

 amount at their disposal was, of course, 

 quite inadequate. Some of the poor things 

 were dead or dying, turning on their lustre- 

 less sides in the pathetically helpless way 

 of suffocating fish ; the others kept coming 

 up every now and then to the surface, 

 gasping for breath, and gulping down great 

 open-jawed mouthfuls of air, to relieve their 

 misery. No doubt the oxygen they thus 

 swallow enters the body-cavity, and slightly 

 assists them in aerating the blood, though 

 much of it, also, may pass in the ordinary 

 way through the gills, which are the regular 

 and normal respiratory organs. It is always 

 interesting to me, however, to watch fish 

 when they come up thus to drink air at 

 the surface, as goldfish often do when 

 thoughtlessly confined in too small a glass 

 basin ; for in this instinctive act, as modern 

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