78 



WITH HARD CHEEKS. 



imagination can hardly conceive the vindictive fury of the 

 conqueror ; who, in the most persevering and unrelenting 

 way, chases his 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 his opponent 

 quite open, so that he sank to the bottom and died. I have 

 occasionally 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. These are the habits 

 of the male fish alone : the females are quite pacific ; appear 

 fat, as if full of roe ; never assume the brilliant colours 

 of the male, by whom, as far as I have observed, they are 

 unmolested." 



The woodcut represents this species of the natural size. 

 Their appetite is voracious ; their food consists of worms 

 and insects, and the minute fry and roe of other fishes. They 

 spawn in summer ; the females, generally paler in colour than 

 the males, depositing their ova of large size, but few in num- 

 ber, on aquatic plants. Although but few are thus produced 

 by each female fish, their numbers are very great. Pennant 

 states that they are occasionally so numerous at Spalding in 

 Lincolnshire, that a man employed by a farmer to take them 

 has earned four shillings a day for a considerable time by 

 selling them at a halfpenny a bushel. Attempts have been 

 made to obtain oil from them ; but they are more frequently 

 strewed over the land for the purpose of manure. 



This species seldom exceeds two and a half or three inches 

 in length ; the body compressed ; the nostrils are pierced 

 in a small depression rather nearer the eye than the end 

 of the upper jaw : the mouth capable of slight projection ; 

 teeth small, forming a narrow band in each jaw, but none on 



