If you keep drilled those two bright eyes
over which God has made you officer, you will notice something near the
fish's eye which keeps opening and shutting like a little door. That little
door covers the gills, and it opens and shuts every time the fish breathes.
But now comes a question which used to puzzle me--that is, What does a fish
breathe?
[Illustration: A CRYSTAL-WALLED PRISON]
When I heard, long ago, that fishes cannot breathe if they are taken out of
the water, I used to think that they breathed the water; for then I knew no
better than the boy who, when he had at last caught a minnow, put it into a
bottle with plenty of water, and corked it up tight, in order to keep his
prize safely.
Of course the poor little fish was dead before he got home. It died, not
from want of water, but from want of air; for fishes draw in and send out
the air through their gills, which are to them what your lungs are to you.
Those fringes which you see when the little doors open, are the gills. They
are so red because they are filled with blood; indeed, they are made of
a great number of little blood-vessels. As the fish swims along with its
round mouth open, it does not swallow the water, but lets it run over its
gills, and then out it comes at the little doors; the red fringes take the
oxygen out of the water, and it goes into the fish's blood. The water is
the fishes' atmosphere, and it is only from it that they can get air to
breathe; so that if the glass globe were broken, and the pretty goldfish
were let fall upon the carpet, unless they were quickly put back into water
they would gasp and die from want of air; just as you would, if someone
held your head long under water.
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