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Chapter Four 



Breeding Goldfislies 



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The breeding of fancy goldfishes is one of the most fascinating of 

 diversions. There are many difficulties to be encountered and even 

 the oldest fanciers sometimes have new troubles to face. It should 

 be said that, on the whole, the breeding of the goldfish is not difficult, 

 and may be undertaken by beginners with reasonable prospects of suc- 

 cess. It is the production and maintenance of the finer and more 

 exacting requirements of the fancy varieties which present the real 

 difficulties. Goldfish, possibly more than any other creatures, draw 

 their characteristics from far-removed ancestors. Or again they may 

 become a counterpart of either parent. This makes a considerable 

 element of uncertainty, since the characteristics of their preceding 

 stock have for the most part contained a great deal of variety, due, no 

 doubt, to experimental crosses. This produces a most interesting and 

 sometimes annoying variation in a lot of young goldfish. As the fish 

 gets beyond the small fry stage the breeder becomes intensely 

 absorbed in daily observation of pouits of form, color and size as they 

 appear. 



The percentage of fancy fish coming true to type is usually small. 

 Ten per cent, of fish to pass the critical inspection of the fanciers' eye 

 is not considered bad. Besides these, about fifty per cent, of the hatch 

 will come true, but will be qualified by slight defects. The balance 

 may be anything at all, single-tail and web-tail fish from double-tail 

 parents being the principal disappointment. These percentages are 

 averaged from general breeding, but are liable to wide variation. 

 Sometimes there is no fish in a hatching to approach the quality of 

 either parent; sometimes a large percentage is better than both 

 parents. If a strain is carefully watched for several generations and 

 no fish varying from the desired type is allowed to breed, the percent- 

 age of young coming true can be kept very high. 



