FISH AS FA THERS. 165 



Some few fish, indeed, are truly viviparous ; among 

 them certain blennies and carps, in which the eggs hatch 

 out entirely within the body of the mother. One of the 

 most interesting of these divergent types is the common 

 Californian and Mexican silver-fish, an inhabitant of 

 the bays and inlets of sub-tropical America. Its chief 

 peculiarity and title to fame lies in the extreme bigness 

 of its young at birth. The full-grown fish runs to about 

 ten inches in length, fisherman's scale, while the fry 

 measure as much as three inches apiece ; so that they 

 lie, as Professor Seeley somewhat forcibly expresses it, 

 1 packed in the body of the parent as close as herrings in 

 a barrel.' This strange habit of retaining the eggs till 

 after they have hatched out is not peculiar to fish among 

 egg-laying animals, for the common little brown English 

 lizard is similarly viviparous, though most of its rela- 

 tives elsewhere deposit their eggs to be hatched by the 

 heat of the sun in earth or sandbanks. 



Mr. Hannibal Chollop, if I recollect aright, once shot 

 an imprudent stranger for remarking in print that the 

 ancient Athenians, that inferior race, had got ahead 

 in their time of the modern Loco-foco ticket. But several 

 kinds of fish have undoubtedly got ahead in this respect 

 of the common reptilian ticket ; for instead of leaving 

 about their eggs anywhere on the loose to take care of 

 themselves, they build a regular nest, like birds, and sit 

 upon their eggs till the fry emerge from them. All the 

 sticklebacks, for instance, are confirmed nest-builders : 

 but here once more it is the male, not the female, who 

 weaves the materials together and takes care of the eggs 

 during their period of incubation. The receptacle itself is 



