Aquatic JLite 



139 



heit, although in the shallow surface 

 water, at the margin of a' pool where the 

 nest is always built, the water may be as 

 warm as 70 degrees. In central New 

 York State nesting may begin before the 

 middle of April. It continues until late 

 in May. The nest itself is a very dainty 

 structure. It is always built of the ma- 

 terials at hand, which, of course, renders 

 it inconspicuous, indeed, almost invisible 

 amidst its surroundings. 



The first nests are built before vege- 

 tation has begun to grow in the pools. 

 The only suitable materials that the 

 builder finds at hand are fine fibers, 

 blades of dead grass and the like. These 

 are loosely woven together and held in 

 place by means of a thread which is pro- 

 duced by the male (as in other species of 

 stickleback) from a secretion of the kid- 

 neys. It coagulates and hardens upon 

 contact with the water, thus forming a 

 thread suitable for binding together the 

 materials of the nest. As the season ad- 

 vances and vegetation begins to appear 

 in the pools, the nests are made mostly of 

 green algse, sometimes with sprouting 

 seeds upon them. They are delicate little 

 structures, spherical in shape, about three- 

 quarters of an inch in diameter, and with 

 a small round hole on one side through 

 which the eggs are placed within the nest. 

 This little round ball of a home is tethered 

 to a rootlet, submerged blade of grass or 

 some similar attachment, and appears so 

 much like a bit of the general mass of 

 debris around it, or the masses of green 

 algae, that it can be discovered only with 

 the greatest diligence. 



The eggs are about one milimeter in 

 diameter, transparent and light yellowish 

 in color. They hatch in about eight or 

 nine days when the water is as warm as 

 65 degrees. The young fishes are about 5 

 mm. long when they hatch. At first they 

 still have a very large yolk-sac attached 

 to them, which contains enough nourish- 



ment to keep them for several days. It 

 soon is all absorbed, however, and the 

 tiny fishling grows fast. For the first 

 few days he attaches himself to some still 

 object by the tip end of his head — pos- 

 sibly by means of a viscid spot. The 

 mouth is almost vertical, but soon be- 

 comes terminal. In two weeks' time 

 many sharp teeth make their appearance 

 on the lower jaw. All this while the 

 young fry is so transparent that all his 

 inside affairs and private workings can 

 be as easily observed as one can see a 

 gardener at work inside his greenhouse. 

 The primitive backbone, with its develop- 

 ing rays, later to become ribs and spines, 

 the heart pulsating at the rate of 108 

 beats to the minute, even the corpuscles 

 of the blood flowing along the channels 

 of the arteries, can be plainly seen. The 

 eyes are the biggest and most conspicu- 

 ous organs, because of their dark color, 

 and take up about one-third of the size 

 of the whole head. They are moved rap- 

 idly in the sockets, together, like the 

 wheels of an automobile. Before the fishes 

 hatch there are a few black, star-shaped 

 or moss-shaped chromatophores, or color 

 spots on the embryo. Later, small, 

 orange-colored ones appear, and then 

 yellow ones, so that by the time the fish 

 is a week old he is almost golden in color 

 and quite a pretty little fellow. From 

 this time on, as soon as the yolk is all ab- 

 sorbed and the mouth parts are well de- 

 veloped, the little fellows swim about 

 freely amongst the vegetation and find 

 their own food in the minute forms of 

 life with which all water vegetation and 

 debris teems. — The Scientific Monthly. 



You never can tell. Sometimes a fel- 

 low is a kicker merely in self-defense. 



Dame Fortune never smiles on a man 

 who deliberately stares her out of counte- 

 nance. 



