832 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



doorway. As he mats the fibers together by ci'eeping over them with 

 his body, he cements them firmly with the slimy mucus that exudes 

 from his skin. He is a quick worker, not to say a jerry builder (any 

 one can watch the whole process easily for himself in a fresh-water 

 aquarium), and he only takes a few hours in getting the entire resi- 

 dence completed from basement to coping-stone. As soon as it is fin- 

 ished, the little architect sets out on his quest of a partner or partners 

 ready to occupy it. If he meets a rival on the way, the two small 

 Turks fight out their differences at once on the spot,. while the bride- 

 elect amicably stands by expectant, and accepts the conqueror. When 

 she emerges from her hiding-place under the waving weeds and comes 

 out, the guerdon of his prowess, to survey the nest he has deftly woven 

 for her, the tiny sultan positively dances and curvets around her, " mad 

 with delight," as an acute observer has well worded it. " lie darts 

 round her in every direction ; then to his accumulated materials for 

 the nest ; then back again in an instant, and, as she does not advance, 

 he endeavors to push her with his snout, and then tries to pull her by 

 the tail and side-spine to the nest." Indeed, there is a deal more that 

 is human and natural in the lives of all these little despised creatures 

 than the people who laugh at theories of tittlebats have ever stooped 

 to notice or discover. 



As soon as the stickleback has duly inducted the partner of his 

 choice with many caresses into the home he has built for her, or rather 

 for her offspring, he introduces her by the door he has left in the side 

 into the closed chamber. In a few minutes the bride has laid two 

 or three tiny, transparent yellow eggs, after which she bores a hole 

 with her snout on the side of the nest opposite to that by which she 

 entered, and makes her exit, a divorced wife, without further formali- 

 ties. "The nest," says Dr. Gunther, "has now two doors, and the 

 eggs are exposed to the cool stream of water, which entering by one 

 door flows out at the other." This, of course, by keeping up a fresh 

 and constant current, supplies them with the oxygen necessary for 

 hatching. Next day, the little sultan goes out again in quest of a 

 fresh mate, and brings back his new bride to add a few more eggs to 

 his stock of spawn. This operation he repeats daily until the nest is 

 nearly full ; and then the fond father sets to work himself at the con- 

 genial task of incubation. For among fish it is almost always the 

 male, not the female, who sits upon the eggs and charges himself with 

 the care and education of the young fry. 



For the subsequent stages, I can not do better than quote Frank 

 Buckland's animated account of a case observed by the learned curator 

 of the Norwich Museum. " Nothing," says the genial naturalist and 

 angler, "could exceed the attention from this time evinced by the male 

 fish, lie kept constant watch over the nest, every now and then 

 shaking up the materials and dragging out the eggs, and then pushing 

 them into their receptacles again and tucking them up with his snout, 



