XI- OBSERVATIONS AND CORRESPONDENCE. 239 



fucus of a golden brown colour and tangles of sea-weed rooted to the 

 stones on which they grew formerly in the sea at " Black Rock " are 

 coated here and there with a common species of moss-animals [Flnstva) 

 and cover the bottom of the tank. Among the broad leaves of fucus 

 the graceful forms of the pipe fishes [Syngnathus aciis) may be dis- 

 cerned on searching for them. In colour they so much resemble 

 the weeds they frequent that it is difficult to see them, and it is not 

 until we have watched one rise, with its central back fin revolving, 

 like the screw of a steamer, and float slowly to the surface, that we 

 can detect the presence of other specimens among the weeds. This 

 is another instance of adaptive colouring subserving protective 

 purposes, of which the soles, turbot and flounders — colourless as 

 sand, or spotted as the shingle with which they cover respectively a 

 great part of their flat bodies — afford more familiar examples. 



Here also may be seen the male of the gleaming dark-banded 

 " fifteen-spined stickleback " [Gastevostetis spinachia) which has the same 

 propensity as its fresh-water relative, and binds together the fronds 

 of weeds to form the nest in which the females of his kind deposit 

 the lustrous blue vitreous -ova he guards with so much pugnacity, 

 driving away all approachijig intruders. Now is the time for the 

 males in general of the fish kind to put on their " wedding-garment " 

 of bright colouring, like the birds of the air. The wrasse {Labrus 

 mixtiis), so aptly called the peacocks of the sea, are very resplendent. 

 Among the latest additions to the Brighton Aquarium may be 

 chronicled the female sea-lion cub born in captivity on June 17th, 

 1891 — the second event of the kind that has occurred during the 

 history of the institution. In this instance, the mother had been 

 acquired but a short time previously. This sea-lioness is an unusually 

 fine and fully mature specimen of the Californian species, Otavia 

 califovnianci [—gillespii). The night of her arrival she managed to 

 clamber over a temporary wooden barrier raised in her enclosure, 

 visited several tanks in succession, devouring the whiting and 

 herrings kept in them, until her progress was arrested by a concrete 

 party wall. She stands, when quite upright (as she has been well 

 trained to do), with her hind limbs turned forward under her body, 

 not less than five feet eight inches, and measures from the tip of her 

 nose, with neck well extended, to the extremity of her hind flippers, 

 when stretched backwards as in swimming, seven feet, and is 

 probably one of the largest of her sex and species on record. 



We are informed by Mr. W. Wells, Tank Superintendent at the 

 Aquarium, that the cub measured eighteen inches at birth. We 

 regret that it is impossible to furnish a portrait of the lively little 

 animal. An early attempt was made to photograph, but owing to the 

 extreme restlessness of the cub the " sitting" was a failure, and no 

 proof could be developed. It was active, playful, and intelligent 

 from the first, and took to the water six days after birth, whence its 

 anxious parent occasionally removed it in her mouth, lifting it by the 

 skin of the neck, as a cat does her kittens. The cub is now nine 

 months old, and three feet six inches long, sleek and fat, and, when 

 basking on the rocks, of a light mouse-colour. It is still nourished 

 entirely by its most affectionate mother, who shows no sign of desert- 

 ing it, and certainly never treated it with the parental indifference 

 ascribed to the Pribyloff species O. ursina in the wild state, by 

 Nordenskiold in the " Voyage of the Vega." The parent of a male 

 cub, born some years previously in the Aquarium, abandoned it after 

 six months' care. 



