8 ANIMAL PARASITES AND MESSMATES. 



selves in the mouth of an obKgmg neighbour, and to take 

 their tithes of the succulent morsels which he swallows. 

 This little fish has received the name of Stegophilus 

 insidiatus. We see that in the animal world it is not 

 always the great which take advantage of the little. 

 Still, let us not be deceived ; there are fishes in the 

 latitude of the Island of Ceylon which really hatch their 

 eggs in the cavity of the mouth, and we have seen some 

 in the museum at Edinburgh, labelled with the name of 

 Arius hookei. Louis Agassiz has made the same observa- 

 tion on a fish of the Amazon, w^hich has also been 

 recognised by Jeffreys Wyman. One fish wraps up its 

 eggs in the fringes of its branchiae, and protects them till 

 they are hatched ; another lays its eggs in holes hollowed 

 out by itself in the steep banks of the river, and protects 

 the young ones after they are hatched. 



To hatch the eggs in the mouth is not more extra- 

 ordinary than to hatch them in any other part of the 

 body. The Sygnathidm hatch theirs in a pouch behind 

 the anus; and it is a curious circumstance that the 

 females do not undertake this duty. The males alone 

 carry their progeny with them. This recalls to our 

 recollection that curious example of the birds known 

 under the name of Phalaropes, among which the males 

 only hatch the eggs. The female of the cuckoo abandons 

 her eggs, and entrusts them to the female of another bird. 



The cuckoo suggests to us the mound-making Mega- 

 pode and the Talegalla of Latham, both of which 

 inhabit Australia ; these birds deposit their eggs in an 

 enormous mass of leaves or grass, which grows warm 

 by decomposition, and the temperature of wliich is great 

 enough to hatch them. The young ones when they come 



