()O() SMALLER STICKLEBACK. 



in prodigious multitudes in some particular parts 

 of Europe. We are told by Mr. Pennant that at 

 Spalding in Lincolnshire, there are, once in seven 

 years, amazing shoals, which appear in the Welland, 

 and come up the river in the form of a vast column : 

 they are supposed to be the multitudes that have 

 been washed out of the fens by the floods of several 

 years, and collected in some deep hole, till, over- 

 charged with numbers, they are periodically obliged 

 to attempt a change of place : the quantity is so 

 great that a man employed to take them has got 

 for a considerable time four shillings a day by sell- 

 ing them at the rate of a halfpenny per bushel. 



SMALLER STICKLEBACK. 



Gasterosteus Pungitius. G. olivaceus, subtus subargentcus, spinis 



dorsalibus decent. 

 Olivaceous Stickleback, subargenteus beneath, with ten dorsal 



spines. 

 Gasterosteus pungitius. Kin. Smaller Stickleback or Banstickle. 



FOUND in similar situations with the preceding 

 species, but is far less common : in size it is con- 

 siderably smaller, rarely exceeding the length of an 

 inch and three quarters, or two inches at the most : 

 its shape is rather more slender, and its colours far 

 less brilliant : it is readily distinguished by the 

 number of its dorsal spines, which however are not 

 always precisely constant in this respect, sometimes 

 amounting only to nine, and sometimes, though 

 very rarely, to eleven. 



