100 MARVELS OF FISH LIFE 
separate and distinct. At three months old he is very 
much the same shape that he will be in after-life, except 
that he is not so thick in the body. At this age the 
goldfish is a beautiful little object, and can be trans- 
ferred from the cage into a glass vessel to be watched. 
The best way to pick out larval fishes is with a glass 
pipette. 
All the early stages of the members of the carp 
family are very similar, so far as I have at present 
examined them, and these include the carp, the bream, 
the roach, the rudd and the minnow, but there is suffi- 
cient variation to enable one to be distinguished from 
the other with the aid of the microscope. 
I used to wonder how it was that the early life 
histories of our pond fishes had never been described, 
until I started to work out that of the roach for 
myself. 
The first year I tried in an aquarium which had 
been prepared months beforehand and contained abund- 
ance of microscopic food. The eggs hatched, but all 
the larvee were dead within a day or two. Next time 
I arranged six large tubs in a row, connecting them 
together with three-inch lead pipe, and again bred in 
these all the minute forms of pond life. This time the 
roach eggs were placed in an open wooden tank and 
the water from the tubs was made to circulate through 
it. Again the eggs were hatched, and again in a day or 
two all the larvee were dead. The third attempt resulted 
in complete success, for, in addition to using floating 
