158 PATEKNAL NURSING. 



But the point of chief interest in connection with these fish, is 

 the extraordinary circumstance that the male undertakes the 

 principal duties of the maternal office. In summer, when the 

 Pipe-fish commence the business of rearing their young, the 

 female fish, instead of depositing her eggs like other fish mothers, 

 transfers them bodily to the guardianship of her partner, and 

 thenceforth has no further care or responsibility of the family. 

 The gentleman Pipe-fish receives the eggs in a sort of marsupial 

 pouch, which runs along the under surface of the loody, and there 

 the precious burden is retained until the young fry are duly 

 hatched and able to take care of themselves. For some time 

 after their birth the young fish regularly resort to the paternal 

 pouch when danger threatens, and Mr. Yarrel says he has been 

 assured by fishermen, that if when the fish are caught the 

 young ones are removed from the parent and placed in the water, 

 they will keep close to the boat, and again enter the pouch if 

 the old fish is held towards them in a favourable position. 



It has never yet been clearly ascertained how the transference 

 of the ova is effected ; but it is no unusual circumstance at low 

 tides and in shallow water to find these fish seated very amicably 

 in pairs side by side under the shelter of some boulder or pro- 

 jecting ledge of rock, and the probability is that it is on these 

 occasions that the female Pipe-fish makes her partner happy. 



One of these fish is a sort of special favourite of ours, from the 

 circumstance that many years ago, when a youngster still at 

 school, it brought us in a very sudden and unexpected manner 

 into a position of what we thought most flattering notoriety. It 

 happened in this wise. We were exploring one day fur out 

 among the shallows left bare by an unusually low ebb of tide, 

 when, in a snug little pool, we discovered a pair of odd-looking 

 and, to us, unknown fish, searching among the weeds, sailing 

 from side to side, and evidently intending to remain in present 

 quarters till next flood. But as 



" The best laid schemes o' mice an' men 

 Gang aft agley," 



so in this instance it chanced with the scheme of two Pipe-fish, for 

 such they were. Not without some trouble we secured the double 

 prize, and bore it straightway to a distinguished savant we knew, 

 who had often before accepted our living plunder in exchange for 



