(29. Owing to some remarks on this subject, made in my work 'On the Variation of Animals under Domestication,' Mr. W.F. Mayers ('Chinese Notes and Queries,' Aug. 1868, p. 123) has searched the ancient Chinese encyclopedias. He finds that gold-fish were first reared in confinement during the Sung Dynasty, which commenced A.D. 960. In the year 1129 these fishes abounded. In another place it is said that since the year 1548 there has been "produced at Hangchow a variety called the fire-fish, from its intensely red colour. It is universally admired, and there is not a household where it is not cultivated, IN RIVALRY AS TO ITS COLOUR, and as a source of profit.") Under natural conditions it does not seem probable that beings so highly organised as fishes, and which live under such complex relations, should become brilliantly coloured without suffering some evil or receiving some benefit from so great a change, and consequently without the intervention of natural selection.
What, then, are we to conclude in regard to the many fishes, both sexes of which are splendidly coloured? Mr. Wallace (30. 'Westminster Review,' July 1867, p. 7.) believes that the species which frequent reefs, where corals and other brightly-coloured organisms abound, are brightly coloured in order to escape detection by their enemies; but according to my recollection they were thus rendered highly conspicuous. In the fresh- waters of the tropics there are no brilliantly-coloured corals or other organisms for the fishes to resemble; yet many species in the Amazons are beautifully coloured, and many of the carnivorous Cyprinidae in India are ornamented with "bright longitudinal lines of various tints." (31. 'Indian Cyprinidae,' by Mr. M'Clelland, 'Asiatic Researches,' vol. xix. part ii. 1839, p. 230.) Mr. M'Clelland, in describing these fishes, goes so far as to suppose that "the peculiar brilliancy of their colours" serves as "a better mark for king-fishers, terns, and other birds which are destined to keep the number of these fishes in check"; but at the present day few naturalists will admit that any animal has been made conspicuous as an aid to its own destruction. It is possible that certain fishes may have been rendered conspicuous in order to warn birds and beasts of prey that they were unpalatable, as explained when treating of caterpillars; but it is not, I believe, known that any fish, at least any fresh-water fish, is rejected from being distasteful to fish-devouring animals. On the whole, the most probable view in regard to the fishes, of which both sexes are brilliantly coloured, is that their colours were acquired by the males as a sexual ornament, and were transferred equally, or nearly so, to the other sex.
We have now to consider whether, when the male differs in a marked manner from the female in colour or in other ornaments, he alone has been modified, the variations being inherited by his male offspring alone; or whether the female has been specially modified and rendered inconspicuous for the sake of protection, such modifications being inherited only by the females. It is impossible to doubt that colour has been gained by many fishes as a protection: no one can examine the speckled upper surface of a flounder, and overlook its resemblance to the sandy bed of the sea on which it lives. Certain fishes, moreover, can through the action of the nervous system change their colours in adaptation to surrounding objects, and that within a short time. (32. G. Pouchet, 'L'Institut.' Nov. 1, 1871, p. 134.) One of the most striking instances ever recorded of an animal being protected by its colour (as far as it can be judged of in preserved specimens), as well as by its form, is that given by Dr. Gunther (33. 'Proc. Zoolog. Soc.' 1865, p. 327, pl. xiv. and xv.) of a pipe-fish, which, with its reddish streaming filaments, is hardly distinguishable from the sea-weed to which it clings with its prehensile tail. But the question now under consideration is whether the females alone have been modified for this object.