in their cheap glass bowl upon the three- legged table, above
which the cloth-covered canary maintains a stolid silence, they
remind me of antimacassars and horsehair sofas and all that is
depressing. It is hard that the goldfish himself should have so
little choice in the matter. Goldfish look pretty in the terrace
pond, yet I doubt if it was the need for prettiness which brought
them there. Rather the need for some thing to throw things to. No
one of the initiate can sit in front of Nature's most wonderful
effect, the sea, without wishing to throw stones into it, the
physical pleasure of the effort and the aesthetic pleasure of the
splash combining to produce perfect contentment. So by the margin
of the pool the same desires stir within one, and because ants'
eggs do not splash, and look untidy on the surface of the water,
there must be a gleam of gold and silver to put the crown upon
one's pleasure.

Perhaps when you have been feeding the goldfish you have not
thought of it like that. But at least you must have wondered why,
of all diets, they should prefer ants' eggs. Ants' eggs are, I
should say, the very last thing which one would take to without
argument. It must be an acquired taste, and, this being so, one
naturally asks oneself how goldfish came to acquire it.

I suppose (but I am lamentably ignorant on these as on all other
matters) that there was a time when goldfish lived a wild free
life of their own. They roamed the sea or the river, or whatever
it was, fighting for existence, and Nature showed them, as she
always does, the food which suited them. Now I have often come
across ants' nests in my travels, but never when swimming. In
seas and rivers, pools and lakes, I have wandered, but Nature has