RIVER GARDENS; 
to receive their food. We are informed, by the 
same author, that the most beautiful kinds are 
taken in a lake in the province of Che-Kyang. 
M. de Sauvigny, in his beautiful work entitled 
“ Les Dorades de la Chine,” describes several of the 
species and varieties to which I have alluded as 
desiderata, and from the carefully drawn and ex¬ 
quisitely coloured plates of his work, there appears 
sufficient ground for considering the species as dis¬ 
tinct as many other kinds of Carp, which have also'a 
strong family resemblance. The description of a few 
of the examples from the work quoted will be 
sufficient to show that if they are only varieties, 
they are very distinct ones, quite as distinct—to 
borrow an analogy from vegetable life—as the 
nectarine and the peach, or the lemon and the 
orange, though by botanists the lemon is only made 
a variety of the orange, as the nectarine is of the 
peach. The Chinese are, however, such accurate ob¬ 
servers, that in all probability we may accept their 
views regarding distinct species, especially when we 
consider the minute attention that has been paid to 
fish in the Celestial Empire, not only as to the means 
of their capture, in which they excel all other nations, 
but also in their nomenclature and classification, the 
elaborate nature of which may be conceived when 
86 
