562 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



in the female are sometimes vestigial, sometimes absent, so it looks 

 as if the habit was one of long standing. Can it be that the females 

 die, or are seriously exhausted after producing the eggs, and that 

 a division of labour has been worked out whereby the males discharge 

 all the parental functions except the actual egg-production? But 

 no one seems to be able to tell us whether the mother sea-spiders 

 are short-lived or not. Or is it possible — we clutch in our ignorance 

 at straws — that the attached eggs serve as a continued sex-stimulus 

 to the males? In any case it is a very remarkable sight to see a large 

 long-limbed male sea-spider from the depths of the sea bearing not 

 merely big bunches of eggs, but sometimes a host of fully-formed 

 young ones clambering about over his body and limbs. It gives one 

 a new impression of the possibilities of paternity. 



A volume might be written on the subject of paternal care. 

 Picture the father hornbill working himself to a skeleton, sometimes 



Head of Hornbill (Buceros), showing an exaggerated growth of bone forming 

 in both sexes a remarkable helmet or casque on the upper surface of 

 the skull. Its use, if any, is unknown. 



to death, to provide food for his spou.se and small family, immured 

 in a hollow tree. All the hard work falls on him; he has not a minute 

 to himself! And though the tale turns out not to be true that the 

 eider-drake allows his breast to be plucked by the eider-duck, in 

 order to make a new quilt for the nest, to replace what man has 

 stolen, there is too little appreciation of the part so many cock-birds 

 take in building the nest, in brooding on the eggs (surely at first the 

 mother's duty), in bringing food to the young, and sometimes even 

 in providing musical entertainment while the hen simply sits. And 

 conversely there is no adequate recognition, for instance, of the 

 courage with which a goose will defend the goslings against enemies, 

 as a cow her calf. 



To take another instance, the male lumpsucker fish {Cyclopterus 

 linnpns) mounts guard over the curiously big bunch of eggs which 

 the female has spawned in the recess of a shore-pool at low-tide. 

 He remains there, fasting, we believe, and not only defending the 

 eggs from intruders, but aerating them with squirts of water from 



