ing and desirable of our pets."* According to Mr. Jesse, they even maintain an affection for each other. In confinement they may be fed with fine crumbs of bread, small worms, flies, yolks of eggs dried and reduced to powder, and various other articles. We usually feed our own with manna croup. Many people, however, even humane-minded philanthropists, and M. S. P. C. A.'s, † never give them any food at all. We ourselves once heard a clergyman say, that they did not require to be fed, because nature had endowed them with the power "of decomposing oxygen." If the stomach is satisfied by this theory, the gills will assuredly make no objection to it.

As this brilliant creature is not an angler's fish, we scarcely know why we have been led to name it here. Perhaps, because at this moment it ever and anon is flashing its golden gleams upon us from a glassy globe upon that marble slab between our windows. Let us enliven our own dull prose by now inserting the great Laker's rhymes :

Type of a sunny human breast

Is your transparent cell,
Where fear is but a transient guest,

No sullen humours dwell;

Where sensitive of every ray

That smites this tiny sea,

Your scaly panoplies repay

The loan with usury.

How beautiful! Yet none knows why
This ever-graceful change,

* Magazine of Natural History, vol. iii. p. 478.

+ Members of societies for preventing cruelty to animals.

Renewed-renewed incessantly-
Within your quiet range.

Is it that ye, with conscious skill,
For mutual pleasure glide;

And sometimes not without your will,
Are dwarfed and magnified?

The happy prisoners here immortalised, having been removed to a pool in the pleasure-ground of Rydal Mount,

Removed in kindness from their glassy cell

To the fresh waters of a living well,

the poet proceeds to cast upon them, from his magic mirror," the light that never was on sea or land,"―

There swims, of blazing sun and beating shower,
Fearless (but how obscured!) the golden power,
That from his bauble prison used to cast
Gleams by the richest jewel unsurpast;
And near him, darkling like a sullen gnome,
The silver tenant of the chrystal dome;

Dissevered both from all the mysteries

Of hue and altering shape that charmed all eyes.
They pined, perhaps they languished, while they shone;
And, if not so, what matters beauty gone,

And admiration lost, by change of place,

That brings to the inward creature no disgrace?
But if the change restore his birthright, then,
Whate'er the difference, boundless is the gain.
Who can divine what impulses from God
Reach the caged lark, within a town abode,
From his poor inch or two of daisied sod?
Oh, yield him back his privilege! No sea
Swells like the bosom of a man set free-
A wilderness is rich with liberty.
Roll on, ye spouting whales, who die or keep
Your independence in the fathomless deep!
Spread, tiny Nautilus, the living sail;

Dive, at thy choice, or brave the freshening gale!
If unreproved the ambitious eagle mount
Sunward to seek the daylight in its fount,

Bays, gulfs, and ocean's Indian width, shall be,
Till the world perishes, a field for thee!

While musing here I sit in shadow cool,
And watch these mute companions in the pool,
Among reflected boughs of leafy trees,
By glimpses caught-disporting at their ease-
Enlivened, braced, by hardy luxuries,

I ask what warrant fixed them (like a spell
Of witchcraft, fixed them) in the crystal cell;
To wheel, with languid motion, round and round
Beautiful, yet in mournful durance bound.
Their peace, perhaps, our lightest footfall marred,
On their quick sense our sweetest music jarred;
And whither could they dart, if seized with fear?
No sheltering stone, no tangled root was near.
When fire or taper ceased to cheer the room,
They wore away the night in starless gloom;
And when the sun first dawned upon the streams,
How aint their portion of his vital beams!
Thus, and unable to complain, they fared,

While not one joy of ours by them was shared.*

THE BARBEL.+

This fish is frequent in the warm and temperate parts of Europe, and abounds in the Rhine and Elbe. It is unknown in Scotland, but occurs in the Thames, and the river Lea in Essex. The former river, in the neighbourhood of London, from Putney upwards, produces quantities of large barbel, but, according to Mr. Yarrell, they are held in little estimation except for sport. They frequent the weedy portions of the river during summer, but seek the deeper water when the weeds decay; they then also shelter themselves near piles, locks, and bridges, till the ensuing spring, They are so numerous

* Yarrow Revisited, and other poems, p. 148.

+ Barbus vulgaris, Flem. and Cuv. Cyprinus barbus, Linn.

near Shepperton and Watten that one hundred and fifty pounds weight has been taken in the course of five hours, and on one occasion two hundred and eighty pounds weight of large sized barbel was captured in a single day. The largest British specimen recorded weighed fifteen and a half pounds. Mr. Jesse has frequently caught barbel while spinning for large Thames trout with bleak or minnow. The barbel feeds on slugs, worms, and fishes, and its spawning season occurs in May and June. The ova, amounting to seven or eight thousand, are deposited on the gravel, and covered over by the parents.*

In a culinary point of view this is one of the worst of the fresh-water fishes. It is gregarious, and roots among the soft banks with its nose, like a sow. During this process small fish are seen to attend upon it, probably with a view to seize on whatever minute aquatic creatures may be dislodged from earth or stones.

The angling season commences in May, and continues till September. The most approved hours are from daylight till ten in the morning, and from four in the afternoon till about sunset. The line should be strong and rather heavily leaded, so that the bait may float about half an inch from the ground. Considerable caution is required in playing this fish, as he is apt to run off when struck, with great violence, towards some stronghold, and in so doing sometimes breaks both rod and line.

* British Fishes, vol. i. p. 322.

He is rather nice in his baits, which must be kept clean and sweet, and untainted by musty moss. "One caution," says Mr. Daniel, "in angling for barbel, will bear repetition: never throw in the bait farther than enabled by a gentle cast of the rod, letting the plumb fall into the water with the least possible noise. It is an error to think that large fish are in the middle of the river; experience teaches the fallacy of this opinion; they naturally seek their food near the banks, and agitating the waters by an injudicious management of the plumb will certainly drive them away."

This small but highly esteemed fish is angled for with a little red worm, near the ground. It bites so freely that many dozens may be taken in a few hours, and affords pleasant occupation to young anglers, and even to those of more advanced years who value sweetness of taste as much as largeness of dimension. It delights in the scours or rippling shallows of otherwise slow running streams. Its habits are gregarious, and the operation of spawning takes place in spring, and occupies a considerable period, being as it were postponed and renewed from time to time. The fry measures about an inch long by the beginning of August, and the fish itself seldom exceeds eight inches. The gudgeon, like many other good things, seems confined to the southern quarter of the island, at least we know of none in Scotland.

* Gobio fluviatilis, Cuv. Cyprinus gobio, Linn.