THE FTFTEEN-SPINED STICKLEBACK. 227 



and the eggs thrown into the stream, the Sticklebacks rush at 

 them from all sides, and fight for them like boys scrambling 

 for halfpence. The eggs are very small, barely the size oi 

 dust-shot, and are yellow when first placed in the nest, but 

 deepen in colour as they approach maturity. 



There is a well-known marine species of this group, called 

 the Fifteen-Spined Stickleback {Gasterosteus spinachid), a 

 long-bodied, long-snouted fish, with a slightly projecting lower 

 jaw, and a row of fifteen short and sharp spines along the back. 

 This creature makes its nest of the smaller algag, such as the 

 corallines, and the delicate green and purple seaweeds which 

 fringe our coasts. 



Sometimes, indeed, it becomes rather eccentric in its archi 

 tecture, and builds in very curious situations. Mr. Couch, the 

 well-known ichthyologist, mentions a case where a pair of 

 Sticklebacks had made their nest * in the loose end of a rope, 

 from which the separated strands hung out about a yard from 

 the surface, over a depth of four or five fathoms, and to which 

 the materials could only have been brought, of course, in the 

 mouth of the fish, from the distance of about thirty feet. They 

 were formed of the usual aggregation of the finer sorts of green 

 and red seaweed, but they were so matted together in the 

 hollow formed by the untwisted strands of the rope, that the 

 mass constituted an oblong ball of nearly the size of the fist, 

 in which had been deposited the scattered assemblage of 

 spawn, and which was bound into shape with a thread of 

 animal substance, which was passed through and through in 

 various directions, while the rope itself formed an outside 

 covering to the whole.' 



