FISH AS FATHERS. 163 



And on the average, however many or however few the 

 offspring to start with, just enough attain maturity in 

 the long run to replace their parents in the next genera- 

 tion. Were it otherwise, the sea would soon become 

 one solid mass of herring, cod, and mackerel. 



These cat-fish, however, are not the only good fathers 

 that carry their young (like woodcock) in their own mouths, 

 A freshwater species of the Sea of Galilee, Chromis 

 Andrea by name (dedicated by science to the memory of 

 that fisherman apostle, St. Andrew, who must often have 

 netted them), has the same habit of hatching out its 

 young in its own gullet : and here again it is the male 

 fish upon whom this apparently maternal duty devolves, 

 just as it is the male cassowary that sits upon the eggs 

 of his unnatural mate, and the male emu that tends the 

 nest, while the hen bird looks on surperciliously and con- 

 tents herself with exercising a general friendly supervision 

 of the nursery department. I may add parenthetically 

 that in most fish families the eggs are fertilised after they 

 have been laid, instead of before, which no doubt accounts 

 for the seeming anomaly. 



Still, good mothers too may be found among fish, 

 though far from frequently. One of the Guiana cat- 

 fishes, known as Aspredo, very much resembles her 

 countrywoman the Surinam toad in her nursery arrange- 

 ments. Of course you know the Surinam toad whom 

 not to know argues yourself unknown that curious 

 creature that carries her eggs in little pits on her back, 

 where the young hatch out and pass through their tad- 

 pole stage in a slimy fluid, emerging at last from the cells 

 of this living honeycomb only when they have attained 



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