The Zoologist — September, 1873. 3671 



In 1851 Mr. Warington repeated these observations (Zool. 3636), 

 and thus accomplished a task which Mr. Edwards was fully com- 

 petent to have undertaken and completed twenty years previously. 

 All honour to them both : these gentlemen, like Mr. Couch and 

 Mr. Kinahan, and subsequently M. Conte of Paris, have given us 

 abundant evidence that they observed accurately the facts which 

 they have recorded so graphically. I trust that no confusion of 

 dates will arise from my coupling the observations of 1838 with the 

 records of 1851. It is really difficult to do otherwise, for a suc- 

 cession of observations were being carried on during the whole of 

 the intervening period, although no contemporary record appears 

 to have been made. 



No one who has not witnessed, I may say who has not gloated 

 over, the procreative and educational proceedings of the stickle- 

 backs, can form any conception of their absorbing interest : no one 

 who has not seen the "redbreast" in all his glory and pride of 

 place, can possibly picture to himself the exceeding beauty of this 

 little fish : it only endures while the cares of paternity are upon 

 him : then, and then only, I might address to him the lines of Lord 

 Byron's dedication of Childe Harold to lanthe:— 



" Shall I vainly seek 

 To paint those charms which varied as they beamed ? 

 To such as see thee not my words were weak, 

 To those who gaze on thee what language could they speak ? 



, * * * ♦ 



Oh, let that eye which, wild as the gazelle's, 

 Now brightly bold, now beautifully shy. 

 Wins as it wanders, dazzles where it dwells." 



It may be a strange conceit to transfer this picture to a fish, and 

 to a male rather than a female, but it is appropriate; the female is 

 a nonentity, a being without attraction ; a provision for the con- 

 tinuance of her kind, and nothing more; she fulfils her destination 

 without love, without sentiment, without sensation, a perfect 

 apathet : but with the male it is not so ; his eye is more resplendent 

 than the throat of a humming bird, and like that beautiful object 

 varies with every change of position ; it is now a burning sapphire, 

 now a living emerald; his breast and belly are brilliant crimson 

 thrown up by contrast with the delicate translucent green of his 

 back; his entire body seems diaphanous, his eye alone retaining 

 its solidity; the rest is glowing, aye, melting, with internal in- 

 candescence. Strange, but sad, this male lanthe is possessed by a 



