f 



THKEE-SPINED STICKLEBACK. 171 



trust committed to the male fish, until by growth they are 

 able to take their place among the full-grown tribes of their 

 race. And well ought they to be fitted for this position, for 

 it not unfrequently involves danger on every side. There are 

 circumstances, indeed, which render it probable that at times, 

 perhaps periodically, an epidemic fury seizes them, and that 

 a general slaughter of the weakest is the result. Mr. Peach, 

 to Avhom I have already had occasion to refer, informs me, 

 that in the north of Scotland, where this fish is common, 

 they get into pools of the rocks at the highest water-mark of 

 the tide, and build their nests. Unconnected with the sea, 

 except at spring tides, the water becomes warm from the heat 

 of the sun; and there the young are hatched under the 

 guardianship of the parents, until they are strong enough to 

 quit the place; after which, toward the decline of the year, 

 not one is to be found, except, indeed, some scores of the 

 adult fish, which are left dead, without any other obvious 

 cause besides their mutual love of fighting. 



But little attention indeed is sufficient to discover that this 

 little family of fishes is an irritable race, and disposed to a 

 display of the domineering impulses of tyranny and oppression, 

 in the exercise of which they are not slow to manifest their 

 consciousness of the formidable nature of the arms they bear, 

 and of their power to wield them with deadly effect. Woe 

 betide an enemy that ventures on an attack. I placed an 

 individual of the best-armed variety in a vessel in which two 

 small crabs were already confined, and being not a little 

 hungry, one of the crabs shewed an inclination to make the 

 new-made prisoner his prey. But in all his attacks the 

 Stickleback was equal to the occasion. He kept his well-armed 

 tail towards the enemy, and depressed and employed it in a 

 manner unlike what most fishes could accomplish, but in 

 which the inferior processes of the vertebrse where shewn to be 

 no hindrance. 



The following will further illustrate these manners of the 

 Sticklebacks, as they are brought into active opposition with 

 each other, and where the contest is with no other apparent 

 object than a display of the pride of victory. "Having," says 

 a writer in Loudon's "Magazine of Natural History," vol. iii, 

 "at various times kept this little fish during the spring and 



