GOLDEN CARP. 
211 
many variations in its domestic or cultivated state 
as the gold fish ; not only the colour of the body, 
but even the form and number of the fins, differing 
greatly in different individuals. The Doctor ob- 
serves that the back fin is sometimes wanting: alto- 
gether, or consists only of a few rays united by their 
connecting membrane; the vent fin is very frequently 
double ; and the tail, which even in its natural state 
is said to be often trifid, becomes still more strik- 
ingly so in the cultivated kind, and so formed as to 
appear horizontal, the middle part or lobe rising up 
between the side parts. 
A whimsical way of exhibiting these fish is some- 
times practised ; a glass bowl is blown with a hollow 
space within, that does not communicate with it. 
In this cavity a bird is occasionally placed : so that 
a goldfinch or a linnet may be seen hopping as it 
were in the midst of the water, while the fishes are 
swimming in a circle round it. 
V 2 
