102 WITH HARD CHEEKS. 



and Berwick Bay ; from \vhence, southward and westward, it 

 may be found all round our coast to the Land's End. 



The Fifteen-spined Stickleback, however, though common 

 on the coast, does not, like the other species of Sticklebacks, 

 ascend rivers ; and is rarely, if ever, taken in fresh water. It 

 is very voracious, swallowing indiscriminately the eggs and 

 fry of other fishes, worms, and marine insects. The collector 

 of minute crustaceous animals should omit no opportunity of 

 examining the stomachs of littoral fishes, and of this species 

 particularly. I have found in them numerous examples of 

 the genus My sis; the opposum shrimp of Montagu, described 

 and figured in the ninth volume of the Transactions of the 

 Linnean Society, page 90, tab. 5, fig. 3, and so named from 

 the females having a pouch on the abdomen, formed by four 

 concave scales turned upwards, in which she carries the ova, 

 and afterwards the young. The species of this genus form 

 the subject of the second memoir of the Zoological Re- 

 searches of Mr. J. V. Thompson, of Cork. 



For the following account of the habits of the Fifteen- 

 spined Stickleback I am indebted to Mr. Couch: "It 

 keeps near rocks and stones clothed with sea-weeds, among 

 which it takes refuge upon any alarm. Though less active 

 than its brethren of the fresh water, it is scarcely less rapa- 

 cious. On one occasion, I noticed a specimen, six inches in 

 length, engaged in taking its prey from a clump of oreweed ; 

 in doing which, it assumed every posture between the hori- 

 zontal and perpendicular, with the head downward or upward, 

 thrusting its projecting snout into the crevices of the stems, 

 and seizing its prey with a spring. Having taken this fish 

 with a net, and transferred it to a vessel of water, in company 

 with an Eel of three inches in length, it was not long before 

 the latter was attacked and devoured head foremost, not, 

 indeed, all together, for the Eel was too large a morsel, so 

 that the tail remained hanging out of the mouth ; and it was 



