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drop from them. That they are best pleased with such 
jejune diet may easily be confuted^ since, if you toss them 
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 
themselves with their pinnce pedorales ; 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 immoveable ; but these appa- 
rently turn them forward or backward in their sockets as 
their occasions require. 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 contain- 
ing such fishes : the double refractions of the glass and 
water represent them, when moving, in a shifting and 
changeable variety of dimensions, shades, and colours ; 
while 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, thaugh 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. 
Linnaeus ranks this species of fish under the genus of 
GyprinuSj or carp, and calls it Cyprinus auratus. 
Some people exhibit this sort of fish in a very fanciful 
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 
