HARDY FISH
We kept an aquarium for a long time and had perch and later goldfish. For a brief period we even had tropical fish. In spite of warnings about temperature changes they did well, being much hardier than we had expected. The perch were the hardiest of all and, on warm days, when they jumped out of the tank, they had to be rescued from the ground where they had flipped and flopped about for a while before being discovered. This apparent ability of fish to live out of water is quite astonishing at times and a reader who lives in London tells how one of her goldfish survived a fall from the window of a third-floor flat when it jumped out of her aquarium on a hot day: 'One morn- ing my faithful attendant arrived with a funereal countenance and silently displayed the lifeless body of a goldfish that she had picked up on the burning pavement below. It had evidently made the proverbial leap out of the frying pan into the fire. In a forlorn hope we dropped it back into the tank; then, to our amazement we saw it instantly revive and swim about among its less adventurous companions. Nor, apparently, did it suffer any ill effects from the grilling experience.'
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