CHAPTER VI. 



STICKLEBACKS AND THEIR NEST- 

 BUILDING. 



OME of the pleasantest associations, 

 bound up with the recollections of my 

 boyhood, are those connected with my 

 excursions for the capture of Stickle- 

 backs. All the scenes of those days of 

 sunshine are still green in my memory, 

 and even the very names of the obscure 

 streamlets and lanes have a sound more intimately 

 familiar than things of yesterday. Sparkbrook, 

 Stoney Lane, Lady -pool Lane, Great Mill, are names 

 still attached to the reminiscences of days of peering 

 into the mysteries of the world beneath the waters, 

 and into the life and movements of half-hidden 

 creatures, whose instincts and habits possessed an 

 irresistible attraction which I could not resist. 



More than once I was on the point of making 

 the interesting discovery concerning the nidification, 

 which M. Coste has had the gratification of adding 

 to the archives of Natural History. I had seen the 

 male Stickleback darting hither and thither, with a 



