SWIMMING ANIMALS 79 



ocellaris) may lay its eggs inside a bottle, and if this bottle is 

 dredged up in a net it is quite likely that the parent will 

 be found inside keeping watch over them. They have even 

 been found inside an ox-bone. 



The gunnel or butterfish (Centronotus) guards its eggs by 

 coiling itself completely round them, as can be seen in Plate 

 32 ; the male stickleback and several species of wrasse build 

 nests of weed within which the eggs are deposited. In the 

 case of the pipe-fishes, which live amongst the sea grass, 

 the males carry the eggs in a pouch under their tails. 



Almost all of our food fishes and many others, however, 

 show no such parental solicitude for their offspring's 

 welfare. They merely cast their eggs forth freely into the 

 water, and these eggs are not heavy and sticky as those 

 mentioned above, but are so nearly of the same weight as 

 sea water that they drift about in the water layers at all 

 depths between the surface and the bottom. Here they 

 are at the mercy of tide and currents and are carried many 

 miles from the region where their parents spawned. The 

 dangers are many ; they are not in sheltered crannies with 

 parents to guard them ; there are enemies all around to 

 devour them ; if their own parents happen to meet them 

 again they will eat them with the greatest relish. What 

 then is the provision for their safety ? There is a well- 

 known proverb, " there is safety in numbers," and perhaps 

 nowhere does this hold better than in the case of these care- 

 free fish. We remarked above that those fishes who fixed 

 their eggs to the rocks laid comparatively few ; by this is 

 meant never more than a thousand and probably consider- 

 ably less. But what is this to the five million eggs a cod 

 will lay, or the eight million laid by a turbot ? And yet 

 such are the dangers to be faced during the life of a fish that 

 it is doubtful whether, at most, as many as ten out of these 

 millions will survive to maturity. 



