NO. 180I MILLERS-THUMB AND ITS HABITS GILL III 



The female then "deserts them, and the male takes" her "place as 

 their protector and guards them for a month, until the young are 

 able to shift for themselves." 



Special data on oviposition or parental care have been published 

 by Edward Newman and Simon Gage. 



The fish observed by Newman was a female, and soon after its 

 reception (March) it "extruded during the night a mass of ova. col- 

 lectively equal in size to a sparrow's egg;" the eggs were "nearlv 

 transparent and enclosed in a tough envelope ; the mass was closelv 

 adherent, somewhat reminding one of frog's 

 s])awn, but the ova appeared to have no '^■s^'-' 



mucilaginous, covering. The number of ova v '' -^tiu 



must have been about a hundred." "Two >*/,-. -^ ' .\y. 



mornings after their extrusion, the un- ,J^' '^*f' 



natural parent had torn the mass asunder ^ ■>'""' ' 



and devoured the greater part of the ova, "-j, 



and before night the work of demolition was Fig. ^6. — Eggs of Cottus 

 completed by the combined efforts of the ^''^'''- After Prevost. 

 Millers-thumb and two minnows." There was no male to assume 

 guardianship. If there had been, doubtless he would have protected 

 and taken charge of the eggs. 



According to Gage, if one goes to the west shore of "Cayuga 

 Lake from April to July, and lifts up flat stones in water twelve to 

 fifteen centimetres deep, there will be found clinging to the under 

 side of many of them an irregular conical mass of beautiful salmon- 

 colored eggs; and under the same stone a Stargazer." Gage thought 

 "the fish seems to have forethought," for the eggs "are never laid 

 above the low-water mark of July ; hence in April or May one must 

 look in deeper water for them than in July." 



Soland, in a work on the Fishes of Anjou (1869). has affirmed 

 that, after hatching, the male continues his care of the young and 

 remains with them until they are nearly full grown. No other ob- 

 server has confirmed this claim, which is probably based on some 

 ■error of observation or deduction. 



VII 



No detailed observations corresponding to those on the Sculpin 

 have been published about the embryology of the Millers-thumb. 

 J. L. Prevost long ago (1825) noticed the eggs and the newly 

 hatched embryo, 5 millimeters long, but did not carry his observa- 

 tions further. Baird (1851) remarked that he had occasionally 

 "found the eggs with embryos moving freely within the envelope. A 



