162 CRITICAL NOTICES OP NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



natural affection for its young. This little fish deposits its spawn in a hole, 

 and watches it until the young ones are hatched. The Goramy of India, are 

 stated by General Hardvvicke, in his account of that fish, to watch with the 

 most active vigilance the margins of the spot which they had selected and 

 prepared for depositing their spawn, driving away with violence every 

 other fish which approached their cover. He adds, that from the time he 

 first noticed this circumstance, about one month had elapsed, when one day 

 he saw numerous minute fishes close to the margin ol the grass, on the outer 

 side of which the parent fishes continued to pass to and fro. 



" The food of nsh is very various, but they may generally be considered 

 as carnivorous animals. They have different and curious modes of procuring 

 it. The eel, for instance, will twist its tail round a rush, or the root of a 

 tree in a rapid stream, and suffering itself to be moved backwards and for- 

 wards by the action of the water, will seize its prey in this position. Pike 

 hide themselves under weeds, or stumps of trees, and dart out and seize the 

 smaller fish. Other sorts will disturb the mud by rolling on it, and then 

 feed on the insects which were concealed under it. But perhaps the most 

 curious fact in regard to the mode in which a peculiar fish procures its food, 

 is to be found in the habits of the chaetodon, of the East Indies. The upper 

 jaw of this fish ends in a tube, through which it is enabled to throw water 

 upon the insects which settle upon aquatic plants, so that they fall into it, 

 and thus become its prey. There is also a small fish found in great num- 

 bers in the rivers of the Burmese empire, which, on being taken out of the 

 water, has the power of blowing itself up to the shape of a small round ball, 

 but its original shape is resumed as soon as it is returned to the river. 



"There are few fish, however, whose habits are more peculiar and inter- 

 esting than those of the salmo genius. Their migrations from fresh water to 

 the sea, and from the sea to fresh water, twice in the year, the great rapidity 

 of their growth, the efforts they make to ascend rapids, overcoming the al- 

 most perpendicular falls of Ballyshannon in Ireland, and of Pont Aberglaslyn 

 in Wales, and the bony excrescence with which the lower jaw of the male is 

 provided, to enable him to remove the gravel, to make a furrow in the 

 spawning season, and which he loses when this operation is over, are facts 

 which must always interest a naturalist." 



The fact that, in the month of March, young salmon pass towards 

 the sea as fry, and return in May about half a pound in weight, 

 is mentioned by a gentleman in Scotland who had frequently 

 tried the experiment of marking fish in their passage to and from 

 the sea. Some of them caught in May, and marked, were found 

 to be in July five pounds in weight, having revisited the sea in the 

 interim. 



The anecdotes, however, are not all piscatory — they at times 

 take a wider range ; some of which are not only amusing, but evince 

 that kind of tact which proves the writer to be well skilled in com- 

 position. As a proof we extract the following description of the 

 mode of life of two ancient ladies, residing in the village of Cleve- 

 land, Staffordshire, whom the author, in his younger days, often 

 visited : — 



,c One of them, lady Blount, w r as the widow of a baronet ; and the other, 

 Miss Barbara Newton, was her maiden sister. When I first visited them, 

 they might each be rather more than seventy years of age. Tall and some- 

 what stiff" in their persons, with formal and rather ceremonious manners, ob- 

 serving the strictest etiquette, not only with their visitors, but with each 

 other; they were, nevertheless, unbounded in their hospitality, and dispens- 



