450 Miscellaneous. 



know where it is, will not swim to the right spot, and the female, 

 after a few ineffectual attempts to find the proper passage into it, 

 turns tail to swim away, viciously chased this time by the male. 

 When he first courts the female, if she, not being ready, does not 

 soon respond, he seems quickly to lose temper, and, attacking her 

 with great apparent fury, drives her to seek shelter in some crevice 

 or dark corner. The coquetting of the male near the nest, which 

 seems due to the fact that he really has not quite finished it, at 

 length terminates by his pushing his head well into the entrance of 

 the nest, while the female closely follows him, placing herself above 

 him, and apparently much excited. As he withdraws she passes 

 into the nest, and pushes quite through it, after a very brief delay, 

 during which she deposits her ova. While she is in the nest, 

 the male, in some impatience, pushes his snout against her tail, 

 and as she passes through he also enters, fertilizes the ova, and then 

 makes his exit at the opposite side. At once he proceeds seriously 

 to attack the female and to drive her to a safe distance ; then, after 

 patting down his disturbed nest, away he goes in search of another 

 female. In this case both the females spawned in his nest, and it 

 is quite likely that more would have done so had I supplied them. 

 The nest was built, and the ova deposited, in about twenty-four hours. 

 My Tinker continued to watch day and night ; and during the 

 light hours he also continued to add to his nest, which at first 

 was a rather hurried and imperfect structure. After eight days I 

 put a ripe female three-spined Stickleback into the tank with him. 

 At once he paid court to her, and solicited her most palpably to 

 accompany him to the nest; this, however, she obstinately refused, 

 and he drove her away in real anger. During the night following 

 she deposited her ova in another part of the tank among the weeds. 

 This unwillingness of the female seems to be the sole cause of our 

 finding no hybrids naturally, as artificially it is not difficult to get a 

 cross between G. leiurus and G. pungitius. As the time approached 

 for the eggs within the nest to hatch, the Tinker was even more con- 

 stant in his attention to it. About the tenth day, before I could see 

 any young Sticklebacks, he began, by mistake, to catch some young 

 Perch, which just then were hatched in the same tank, and to project 

 them into his nest. In order to be quite sure, I took some young 

 Perch from another batch in a dish with a pipette, and put them into 

 the tank near his nest. I saw him at once seize them, put them into 

 his nest, and fan them afterwards with great apparent affection ; this 

 attention was, however, not appreciated ; for the fry of the Perch 

 are very erratic and wandering in their habits, and they swam out 

 immediately with a skipping sort of motion. About the twelfth 

 day young Sticklebacks were visible, but they seemed quite still, 

 resting here and there upon the fibres of which the nest was built ; 

 none of them, as yet, seemed to have any errant desires, and not 

 one of them wandered or gave their anxious parent any real 

 trouble. About this time the Tinker was occasionally seen to visit 

 and to inspect rather frequently another spot in the tank ; and 

 on the following day (the 11th) he began there to build another 

 nest, this time free from any rockwork, and just in the middle of the 



