150 MISS MARION I. NEWBIGIN. 
There is one very common fish whose movements always 
seem to me of great interest. This is the lumpsucker 
(Cyclopterus lwmpus), which appears in the rock pools in 
- the spring, usually in March or April. There one often 
finds the great unwieldy creature half uncovered by water, 
with its nose pressed against a mass of bright orange eggs. 
When I first beheld a lumpsucker in this uncomfortable 
position I was seized with compassion, and, hastily conclud- 
ing that it was a female left stranded by the tide, carefully 
carried it out to the open water. But, mark the dangers 
of unregulated humaunitarianism, I learnt afterwards that it 
was the male and not the female, and that he had taken 
upon himself the task of watching those eggs until they 
hatched, while the thoughtless mother had taken her 
departure to the open sea. Prof. M‘Intosh states that he 
once watched a marked male for six weeks, and he seemed 
to never leave his post, but was always to be found at every 
low tide, often almost wholly uncovered by the water. 
Now the breeding time is in spring, when gales are pre- 
valent; and the lumpsucker, though it possesses considerable 
power of attaching itself by means of a ventral sucker, is a 
feeble swimmer. In consequence, it is not infrequently 
swept from its situation by the storms of spring and cast 
up to die on the beach. It is not uncommon, after a severe 
March storm, to see hundreds of lumpsuckers on the beach, 
so that the paternal devotion is paid for at a heavy price. 
If we ask what good it is, and why such an instinct should 
persist at the expense of so constant and so heavy an 
elimination, I do not know what the answer is. The only 
animals which I have seen to attack the eggs on the large 
scale are the sea-gulls, who often break off and carry away 
great masses of them, One cannot suppose that the lump- 
sucker can defend the eggs against so powerful a foe, 
Another set of fish in which the males have similar habits 
are the sticklebacks, but their instincts, as is well known, 
are more elaborate than those of the lumpsuckers, for they 
actually weave a nest for the eggs. The fifteen-spined 
stickleback is often found in rock pools, and is the largest 
and handsomest of our British forms. 
4, The last set of shore animals we shall consider are the 
