XCVIII. 
OF SELBORNE. 
263 
pleased with such jejune diet may easily be confuted, since if 
you toss tliem crumbs they will seize them with great readiness, 
not to say greediness ; however, bread should be given sparingly^ 
lest, turning sour, it corrupt the water. They will also feed 
on the water-plant called lemna (duck's meat), and also on 
small fry. 
When they want to move a little they gently protrude them- 
selves with their pinnce pcdorales ; but it is with their strong 
muscular tails only that they and all fishes shoot along with 
such inconceivable rapidity. It has been said that the eyes of 
fishes are immovable ; but these apparently turn them forward 
or backward in their sockets as their occasions recpjire. They 
take little notice of a lighted candle, though applied close to 
their heads, but flounce and seem much frightened by a sudden 
stroke of the hand against the support whereon the bowl is hung ; 
especially when they have been motionless, and are perhaps 
asleep. As fishes have no eyelids, it is not easy to discern when 
they are sleeping or not, because their eyes are always open. 
Nothing can be more amusing than a glass bowl containing such 
fishes : the double refractions of the glass and water represent 
them, w^hen moving, in a shifting and changeable variety of 
dimensions, shades, and colours ; wdiile the two mediums, assisted 
by the concavo-convex shape of the vessel, magnify and distort 
them vastly ; not to mention that the introduction of another 
element and its inhabitants into our parlours engages the 
fancy in a very agreeable manner. 
Gold and silver fishes, though originally natives of China and 
Japan, yet are become so well reconciled to our climate as to 
thrive and multiply very fast in our ponds and stews. Linna3us 
ranks this species of fish under the genus of cijprinus, or carp, 
and calls it Gypriimis ciuratus. 
Some people exhibit this sort of fish in a very fairciful way ; 
for they cause a glass bowl to be blown with a large hollow 
space within, that does not communicate with it. In this cavity 
they put a bird occasionally ; so that you may see a goldfinch or 
a linnet hopping as it were in the midst of the water, and the 
fishes swimming in a circle round it. The simple exhibition of 
the fishes is agreeable and pleasant ; but in so complicated a 
