92 ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
and a male will kill a mate to whom he does 
not happen to take a fancy. Breeders have 
handled this situation by placing the pair in a 
tank with a glass partition, it having been ob- 
served that when a male watches a female in 
this manner for a time, he is more likely to ac- 
cept her with amiability. Males will kill one 
another, and females are not always averse to 
bullying other females and killing specimens 
smaller than themselves. 
Most breeders transfer paradise fishes with 
a cup if possible, as a net has sometimes proved 
injurious to their delicate fins. 
If the male happens to be of the sort that 
eats his eggs, the eggs can be removed with a 
cup to a well-stocked tank, where the young, 
on hatching, may attach themselves to the vege- 
tation till their yolk-sacs are absorbed. 
These fishes, being equipped with air-breath- 
ing facilities, do not require a great deal of 
water, two gallons sufficing for a pair three to 
four inches in length; but if one wishes to 
breed them, an aquarium that will accomodate a 
six-inch bubble nest must, of course, be provided. 
Tue Gouramti 
Dwarf Gourami—T'richogaster lalius 
Striped Gourami—T. fasciatus 
Thick-lipped Gourami—T. labiosus 
Spotted Gourami—Osphromenus trichopterus 
These yarious species of gourami, kept in 
home aquaria, are of similar habits. The dwarf 
gourami is not uncommon, and the striped, spot- 
ted thick-lipped and other species have been 
introduced from India and the Malay Peninsula. 
No fish presents a more self-satisfied appear- 
ance than the chunky dwarf gourami, with a 
total length of one and a half inches and a 
pretty blue body offset with orange-red vertical 
bars. The striped gourami attains a length of 
four or five inches and is adorned with alternate 
stripes of red and blue in brilliant array. The 
spotted gourami is least attractively marked, 
with its plain gray body and dark-spotted sides. 
Some other species of gourami are said to weigh 
as much as twenty pounds. 
Several species have been bred in captivity, 
building a nest of bubbles, five or six inches in 
diameter, which the male jealously guards, even 
killing the female in his feverish anxiety to 
protect his offspring. She should be removed im- 
mediately after spawning. The gourami are 
peculiarly subject to being preyed upon by the 
carnivorous plant, Utricularia, which catches 
the new-born young in its bladder-like traps, and 
ere long transforms them from living, moving 
animals into immobile plant tissues. Several 
hundred eggs are laid and the young hateh in 
from one to three days according to the tempera- 
ture of the water, which may range on an 
average from 65 to 80 degrees. They breed sey- 
eral times during the summer, at a temperature of 
about 75 degrees. The dwarf gourami uses both 
plants and bubbles in the construction of his nest. 
When the fry leave the nest a few days after 
they hatch, it is time to remove the father, who, 
fish-like, suddenly shifts his unstable instinct 
for the preservation of his species to a shame- 
less appetite for his own babies. 
The food of the gourami is more varied than 
that of most fishes of its class, aquatic plants, 
worms, insects and crustaceans supplying its 
nourishment in a state of nature, to which, in 
captivity, a diet of scraped beef, fish and shell- 
fish, and the prepared fish-foods, may be added. 
Like paradise fish, the gourami has accessory 
breathing organs, adapted to air breathing. It 
does not quit the water, but frequently visits 
the surface for oxygen, of which its gills seem 
unable to extract a sufficient quantity from the 
water. 
Ficutine Fisues 
Siamese Fighting Fish—Betta splendens 
Red Fighting Fish—B,. rubra 
Fighting Fish—B. pugnax 
Man has not exercised his brutal betting 
instinct solely on the result of fights between 
dogs and cocks with their kind, bulls with man, 
and men (so-called) with men. He has found 
a subject even in fishes, and gambled away im- 
mense sums upon the outcome of aquatic combats 
fought to a bloody end, his pleasure in the 
spectacle not having been diminished by the 
diminutive size of the combatants, but, rather, 
heightened by the wonderful colors their excite- 
ment causes them to assume. 
The King of Siam, as is well known, was at 
one time the recipient of considerable revenues 
from licenses granted for such fights, in which 
one fish is said always to be killed, sometimes 
both. 
Betta spendens and Betta rubra are hand- 
somely colored, excitement causing the assump- 
tion of most brilliant flashes of color. They live 
in shallow waters and, like the paradise fish, 
build a bubble nest among floating plants, to 
which the male carries the eggs, which hatch in 
about twenty-four hours and the young leave 
the nest in a few days. The mother fish should 
be removed after spawning, permitting the jeal- 
ous father to guard his young without murder- 
ing lookers-on. He destroys the nest when the 
young are hatched, and cares for them for some 
