PARENTAL CARE AMONG FRESH-WATER FISHES. ■ 447 



Paternal care is continued for many days after tlie birth of the 

 young. At first these may be crowded together in a dense mass, 

 but as time passes they disperse morie and more and spread round 

 the father. Frequently, especially when the old one is feeding, 

 some — one or more — of the young are taken into the mouth, but they 

 are instinctively separated from the food and spit out. At last the 

 young swarm venture farther from their birthplace, or perhaps are 

 led away by their parent. Such a swarm may be occasionally no- 

 ticed by the visitor to a likely stream, and one such the present writer 

 saw in his youth as he was wandering along the bank of the Rahway 

 River. Having read the paragraph b}^ Goldsmith, to the effect that 

 no fishes exercise care over their progeny, he was quite unprepared 

 for such a manifestation of parental interest, and, indeed, it was 

 some time before he recognized the nature of the phenomenon. A 

 black cloud was apparent near the opposite bank, which was slowly 

 moving toward the middle of the stream. It was at first conjectured 



F"IG. 30. — Atnicurtis ntbulosus. After Bean. 



to be a lot of tadpoles, but as it approached a large catfish became 

 distinguishable in the midst of small, black wrigglers, which 

 were at last recognized as young catfishes. The swarm seemed to 

 revolve round the large fish, sometimes almost surrounding him and 

 then massed by the side. For more than an hour the slow movement 

 from the bank to midstream was observed, when other interests led 

 tlie youth away, and he left the swarm to itself. 



The same swarming is practiced by the fish in an aquarium, as the 

 writer has observed. ]\Iore prolonged observations were made and 

 recorded by Smith and Harron : 



The very young fry were also taken into the mouths of the parents nnil blown 

 out, especially those which became separated from the main lot and were found 

 in the sand and sediment. The old fish would take in a mouthful of fry and 

 foreign particles, and retain them for a moment, and expel them with some force. 

 After the young began to swim and became separated, the parents continued to 

 suck them iu and mouth them, and, as subsequently developed, did not always 

 blow them out. 



