Fish
Source:
What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games And Pastimes
Category:
PETS
Bowls of goldfish are not uncommon, but few people seem to care for
fish of other kinds. And yet a little aquarium can be stocked for a
small sum and is a most interesting possession. One small tank of
young bream, for example, can be a perpetual and continually fresh
delight. Let the tank have cloisters of rockwork and jungles of weed,
so that hiding may be possible, and then watch the smaller fish at
their frolics. Young trout are hardly less beautiful, and very easy
to keep healthy, in spite of general opinion to the contrary. The
important thing is to maintain a current of water through the tank.
The old way was to carry the overflow down a pipe in the centre
through its surface opening, but an improvement on this system is for
the leakage to be at the bottom of the tank and the inflow at the top.
Young perch are beautiful too,--and tench, and dace, and roach,--and
all are hardy. Feeding them is very simple. The shop from which you
buy the fish will keep you supplied with the proper food. The American
catfish, with its curious antennae or whiskers, and its gleaming eyes,
set as by a jeweler, is more wonderful, and not a whit more difficult
to keep. But to be amused by such unfamiliar neighbors as a tankful of
fish there is no real need either to stray abroad or to spend any
money. The ordinary minnow, which you can catch in any stream and pop
into a jar, will serve to introduce you to a new world--a world of
silent progressions, of incredible celerities, of amazing
respirations.
Next:
Silkworms
Previous:
Turtles
Viewed 3579