PAKENTAL CARE AMONG FRESH-WATER FISHES. 521 



anxious to prove the assertion that the parent fish among the chroniides talce 

 their young into their mouths, I called into niy study some of my family and 

 asked them to watch what hajipened when I revolved the table toi) upon which 

 the aquarium was standing. Half a return of the revolving top was suflicient — 

 the whole shoal quickly gathered about the i)arent's head; [she] oi)ened [her] 

 mouth, and into it swam the sixty little tish, leaving us to wonder what had 

 become of them. It was a wonderful sight and made a vivid impression upon 

 my mind. It is difficult to describe such a sight; one must see it to ai)i)reciate 

 it. Swiftly, but in perfect oi-der and with great grace, all the young swam into 

 the open mouth of the parent and disappeared. I ascertained that they meas- 

 ured a little more than one-third of an inch in length. The parent fish, as I 

 have said, only measured two and three-(iuarters inches, yet [she] found room 

 to pack away in [her] throat over 60 young, each measuring a third of an 

 inch in length. Once safely within [her] mouth, [she]- did not let them out 

 again for several hours, and then I was fortunate enough to see [her] expel 

 them. Two or three were first thrown out of the mouth (shot out, as a smoker 

 puffs out smoke from his mouth). Then a few more were thrust out. until 

 nearly thirty were swimming about; then with a circular motion [she] scat- 

 tered all the rest almost simultaneously into the larger world of water contained 

 in the tank. 



Now that the young fish were out the parent fish watched over them. I had 

 introduced two fresh-water shrimps into the tank a few days before. The fish 

 iiad taken no notice of them, but now the jealous parent chased these poor 

 shrimps up and down the tank in such a savage way that I had to take them 

 out. I may add that whenever I wanted to see the young fish swim into their 

 parent's mouth it was only necessary to make some slight disturbance on the 

 table, and at once the beautiful and strange scene was enacted. After two or 

 three days the little fish began to venture to the extreme limits of the aquarium 

 hunting for food, and now, when danger was near, the parent fish did not wait 

 for the fry to come to [her] — in fact, they did not seem quite so eager to be 

 swallowed as at first— but [she] went after them, gathering them up one by one 

 from all parts of the tank until every one was safe within [her] moutli. Each 

 evening also, at about sundown, all the young fish were gathered up and kept in 

 the mouth all night. I did not watch all night, but when I looked during the 

 night I could never see any of the fish about, so I concluded [sh(>] never let 

 them out after collecting them at sundown until the next morning. 



The young fish began to grow not only in size, l)ut in independence, and after 

 five days from their first exit the parent fish treated them as though the time 

 had come for them to look after themselves, and soon after [she] took no fur- 

 ther trouble with them, except in the way of fighting any supposed enemy that 

 was introduced into the tank. 



I may add that I have since observed other fish, with the same result. — I 

 mean, of course, other chroniides ('rihijiim. 



A SOUTH A.MERICAX NEST-MAKING CICHLID. 



In ]f)01 a iininher of livino- individuals of two Brazilian species 

 of Cichlids, identified as Geophac/us hrasiliensis and (t. qi/m- 

 nogenys^ were received in Germany, and two aquariists recorded 



"The cichlid figured on page 525 of this article "may be Geophafim hrnchij- 

 iirus Cope," according to Mr. C. Tate Regan (//; Hit.) who has recently reviewed 

 all the American cichlids. 



SM 1905 o~ 



