A HAPPY FAMILY. 
53 
eating from mj hand, or rising to the top when called, or 
roiling on his side to be played with, these are common¬ 
place matters; he will nibble my finger gently for ten 
minutes at a time, play with a stick, dart about at a 
game of touch, or assemble his little band of juvenile 
carpenters, and get up a frolic with them for my amuse¬ 
ment. But he is a gentleman in every thing—easy, 
dignified, never put out; and if a shoal of saucy bleak or 
daring minnows steal the choicest morsel even from his 
lips, he yields the point at once, takes no revenge, but 
looks with expectant eye to his protector for more. 
As to chub and bream and dace, I have as many as 
the tank will support, all of them thoroughly tame. The 
minnows and bleak are “ the fun of the fair,” and the 
loach, the untameable savages that hold aloof from the 
general society, and, spite of every kindness, persist in 
leading a life of their own. 
Above the river-tank are the shelves containing my 
aquatic curiosities. There the ravenous water-beetles 
and their larvae, with other creatures of similar habits, 
plunge and kick in their crystal jars. Give them a 
minnow, how they plunge their fangs into the palpitating 
flesh, consume their prey piecemeal without first killing 
it, dragging the viscera from the trembling creature, or 
boring into the gills while it yet struggles for life! If 
now and then a death occurs in the tank, these carni¬ 
vorous gluttons have the carcase tossed to them to riddle 
and consume; but as this very seldom happens, they 
have to remain content with earth worms from the 
garden, which I find answer very well for every one of 
the flesh-eating aquatics. 
