506 



PARENTAL CARE AMONG FRESH-WATER FISHES, 



Spinachia has also a characteristic habit of making a nest, using as 

 a basis a frond of seaAveed or some sea plant. The nests " occur most 

 frequently among seaAveeds fringing the tidal pools, and of such 

 marginal reeds the}^ are constructed," as has been indicated by Prince. 



-^f-^-; 



7 ^o^"7, 





!">> 



Vr:^ 





Fig. 87. — Nest of Ten-spined Stickleback. Male rotating in bis nest to make it tubular. 



After Coste. 



It has been generally forgotten that the nest of a Spinachm was first 

 illustrated in 1843 by Robert Hamilton in his British Fishes (pi. 6). 



THE SUNFISHES AND THEIR KIN. 



Perhaps the fishes best and most generally known to the boys, and 

 consequently the elder natives of eastern and middle America, are 

 those most frequently called sunfishes or sunnies, but which also are 

 misnamed in various localities bream, roach, and perch. Bream and 

 its corrupt form, brim, are, indeed, in most common use in many 

 places, especially in the Western States. These are the most gayly 

 colored of a family designated by ichthyologists as Centrarchids, and 

 with popular intent sometimes dubbed the Sunfish family. All have 

 a compressed body, which is mostly expanded vertically and almost 

 equally beloAv and abo^e the longitudinal axis of the body. The 

 scales are mostly rather large or of moderate size, but in some (the 

 black basses) rather small, and the lateral line is continuous. The 

 head is scaly and in most the suboperculum is expanded backward in 

 an ear-like flap. The nostrils are double. The roof of the mouth is 

 dentigerous, the teeth being in some confined to the vomer, but in 

 most extending on to the palatines and in some also to the pterygoids 

 and the tongue. There are mostly six branchiostegal rays, very rarely 



