GOLDFISH 
NE of the most interesting journeys 
Jimaginable would be to travel in 
# Ancient China where the ancestors of 
the goldfish in our aquarium lived. 
3 For it might take us back into 
~ ancient China and along the streams 
which flow into those magnificent 
rivers which sweep from the high 
mountains in eastern China to the great rich plains 
of the coast. And we should pass strange cities 
beset with beautiful temples, and we should see 
Chinese men dressed in their robes of silk, the color 
of peach blossoms or apple blossoms or blue like 
the sky or purple as the violets. And we should find 
playing by the banks of the stream little children 
dressed in every color of the rainbow, and the little 
girls might perhaps be toddling about on their tiny 
bandaged feet. 
And if we should find this ancestral fish we would 
find with it many companions in the picturesque 
stream, because the Chinese have been the best 
managers of fish in the world. We in America are 
thousands of years behind the Chinese in intelli- 
gence in the preserving of fish. From times too 
ancient to be recorded in history, the Chinese have 
yearly taken loads of water in which there is spawn 
of fish, and have carried them to safe ponds where 
the newly hatched fry could be fed, usually with 
lentils or yolks of eggs. The result is that although 
China is over-populated, having at least three 
hundred persons to the square mile, while there are 
226 
