92 \VITH HARD CHEEKS. 



taken possession of by as many other little tyrants, who 

 guard their territories with the strictest vigilance ; and the 

 slightest invasion invariably brings on a battle. These are 

 the habits of the male fish alone : the females are quite pa- 

 cific ; appear fat, as if full of roe ; never assume the brilliant 

 colours of the male, by whom, as far as I have observed, they 

 are unmolested." 



The woodcut represents this species of the natural size. 

 Their appetite is voracious ; their food consists of worms and 

 insects, and the minute fry and roe of other fishes. They 

 spawn in summer ; the females, generally paler in colour than 

 the males, depositing their ova of large size, but few in num- 

 ber, on aquatic plants. Although but few are thus produced 

 by each female fish, their numbers are very great. Pennant 

 states that they are occasionally so numerous at Spalding in 

 Lincolnshire, that a man employed by a farmer to take them 

 has earned four shillings a day for a considerable time by 

 selling them at a halfpenny a bushel. Attempts have been 

 made to obtain oil from them ; but they are more frequently 

 strewed over the land for the purpose of manure. 



This species seldom exceeds two and a half or three inches 

 in length ; the body compressed ; the nostrils are pierced 

 in a small depression rather nearer the eye than the end of 

 the upper jaw : the mouth capable of slight projection ; teeth 

 small, forming a narrow band in each jaw, but none on the 

 vomer, palatine bones, or tongue : the gill-opening large ; the 

 fin-rays as follows : 



D. Ill 9 : P. 10 : V. 1 : A. 1 H- 8 : C. 12. 



The principal dorsal spine long and blunt, its lateral serra- 

 tions small and few in number ; a membrane attached to the 

 spine, by which it is depressed ; the ventral spine triangular 

 at the base, the serrations on its upper edge large and not 

 thickly set, those on the under edge small and numerous : 



