70 THE WONDER OF LIFE 



stickleback, which makes a nest among the seaweeds, and 

 watches over his offspring with a remarkable devotion. At 

 the breeding season he is gorgeously coloured in red, orange 

 and green, and is like a fragment of rainbow in the pool. 

 With strange glutinous threads, which come from his 

 kidneys, he ties fronds of seaweed together into a nest 

 with an entrance and an exit and a little room in the middle. 

 Thither he manages to lead his mate, who lays her eggs 

 in the nest and returns to everyday pursuits. The male 

 it is who mounts guard and drives off intruders, often much 

 larger than himself a fine example of a big soul in a little 

 body. When the young are hatched, like animated com- 

 mas in the water, his labours do not cease, for he seems 

 to spend his day in tending them driving them in at 

 one door, only to see them reappear forthwith by the other. 

 Another striking case is that of the lumpsucker or cock- 

 paidle (Cycloptems lumens], a quaint sea-shore fish which 

 has its pelvic fins shunted forwards and transformed into 

 an adhesive sucker which takes a firm grip of the rocks. 

 The female lays a large mass of reddish eggs in a recess 

 of a deep rock-pool about the low tide-mark, and the male 

 mounts guard over them. He becomes greatly excited 

 at the approach of an intruder, but what is even more 

 interesting is the way in which he every now and then 

 lashes his tail vigorously from side to side close by the 

 mass of eggs. The result of this performance is that the 

 eggs are washed free of the mud or debris that settles on 

 them, and it is difficult not to believe that the lumpsucker 

 is aware of what he is about. He has been known to guard 

 the eggs so anxiously that even meals were neglected. 

 The infantile mortality may be lessened, as we have 

 seen, by a migration to open water, or by an increase of 



