322 [Assembly 



eggs. He offers her his asylum for her progeny. Common males 

 are readily distinguished, for they are now dressed in the rich 

 livery of love ! Tliey are dressed in the most brilliant colors ! 

 Their cheeks and bellies lose their habitual whiteness, and are 

 now covered with the color of fire ! A bright orange or aurora 

 red! The back, which is ordinarily of a grayish hue, changes 

 through every shade of green ! blue! silver! The female selectedj 

 &c., soon follows him ; he presses open the door of his asylum, 

 then makes way for her to go in. You see nothing but her tail 

 out of the door. She remains there only two or three minutes, 

 during which you see her convulsive efforts in laying her eggs. 

 She then comes out pale and discolored, and has made another 

 hole in the nest. The male's color during all this is changeable, 

 he is agitated, he seems in paroxysms. He helps the female, rub- 

 bing her with his nose, and the moment she comes out he slips 

 in, and begins to wriggle over the eggs, and then begins to repair 

 the nest which has been damaged by the female in her agitation 

 in laying. But this nest, whose construction has caused so much 

 trouble, is not only destined to receive the eggs of one single 

 female, but many more, for the male attracts other females to the 

 nest, and for many days in succession — or the same female — so 

 that the nest becomes a rich magazine, where each heap of eggs 

 separately form altogether one large block (un block enorme.) 



The faculty of the female of laying her eggs at different times, 

 more or less variable, explains the prodigious multiplication of 

 these lish. One nest often contains from one thousand to two 

 thousand eggs. The male is the only guardian of the eggs, for 

 the female not only does not take any care of her eggs, but some- 

 times forms coalitions wiih other females to invade the nest and 

 ferociously devour the eggs. The male has to watch the eggs for 

 a whole month, until the hatching. He covers the nest with 

 stones half the weight of his body; he closes the door one side 

 and watches the other hole, keeping up currents of water to the 

 eggs to wash them incessantly, for the eggs would perish without 

 it by the formation of a cottony covering. He protects the infant 

 fish for a long time. They are hatched with an umbilical cord 

 attached, so large as to be dilficult for them to move well on 

 account of its weight. The male will not permit one of them to 



