282 THE STICKLEBACKS NEST-BUILDING FISHES. 



Other with the greatest rapidity, biting and endeavoring to 

 pierce each other with their spines, which on these occa- 

 sions are projected. I have witnessed a battle of this sort 

 which lasted several minutes before the other would give 

 w^ay; and when one does submit, imagination can hardly 

 conceive the vindictive fury of the conqueror, who, in the 

 most persevering and unrelenting w^ay, chases its rival from 

 one part of the tub to another until fairly exhausted with 

 fatigue. They also use their spines with such fatal effect 

 that, incredible as it may appear, I have seen one, during 

 a battle, absolutely rip an opponent quite open, so that it 

 sank to the bottom and died. I have known three or four 

 parts of the tub taken possession of by as many other 

 little tyrants, who guard their territories with the strictest 

 vigilance, and the slightest invasion invariably brings on 

 a battle." 



It is pleasing to add for the honor of the sex that the 

 females take no part in these ferocious proceedings; a 

 redeeming feature in the belligerents, however, is the care 

 which they take in building their nests and w^atching over 

 the welfare of the females and their eggs. The reader may 

 not have heard of nest-building fishes, and, indeed, although 

 the ancients were acquainted with this instinct in some 

 fishes, it was not until 1838 that modern naturalists proved 

 this by the discovery of a stickleback nest. These ani- 

 mals collect small pieces of straw or stick, with which the 

 bottom of the nest is laid among water-plants, and these 

 they cement together by a transpiration from their own 

 bodies, which forms a thread through and round them in 

 every conceivable direction. The thread is whitish, fine, 

 and silken. The sides of the nest are made after the 

 bottom. 



Not many fishes are yet known as nest-builders. The 

 Goramy, a native of the China seas, forms at the breeding- 

 season a nest by interlacing tlie stems and leaves of aquatic 



