Gatty Marine Laboratory, St. Andrews. 217 
Not unfrequently only a single Shanny is encountered in a 
pool, its presence being disclosed by the noise as it leaps from 
the seaweeds on which it has been lying into the water. 
Yet the adult females deposit a considerable number of eggs 
in small rocky caverns, and the young abound in the rock- 
pools in August and September, when they are still more or 
less pelagic. As they increase in size they become fewer— 
not so much by spreading themselves in the ocean or by 
taking advantage of new sites amongst the rocks, but 
apparently by steady diminution from predatory neighbours. 
Thus it is that large adults are comparatively rare at 
St. Andrews. 
The eggs of the Shanny would not seem to suffer so 
seriously from the attacks of ‘birds, rats, and predatory fishes 
as those of the Short-spined Cottus and the Lumpsucker, nor 
are the adults much, if at all, molested by man, yet the drain 
on the young and adolescent forms suffices to restrict the 
numbers. 
The Viviparous Blenny is by no means plentiful in its 
adult condition between tide-marks, even in winter, though 
it cannot be said to be rare. Its distribution at St. Andrews, 
for instance, is similar to what it was fifty years ago, and 
perhaps for a very much longer period; yet its young, so far 
as observed, do not leave the tidal region, though the adults 
may occasionally be seen following the flowing tide at low- 
water mark. It has also to be mentioned that in spring and 
summer the adults are rare between tide-marks, probably 
having gone to estuarine and laminarian regions to recruit. 
They are more frequently met with in the rock-pools from 
November to January. Yet the adults are to be found in 
the harbour throughout the summer; they appear to take 
to the rock-pools in connection with the discharge of their 
young. The viviparous habit affords a contrast both with 
those having demersal and those having pelagic eggs. The 
young, further, reach an advanced stage of growth (about 
two inches) before leaving the parent, and thus commence 
life under favourable auspices; yet the attacks made on them 
by pelagic and littoral fishes, and even by their own parents, 
suffice to keep the species in check, so that though an adult 
female may produce from 40 to 70 or more young in a form 
capable of taking care of themselves, and at once sheltering 
under stones, sticks, crabs, shells, and similar structures, yet 
the losses ere they reach the adult condition are great—and 
this without any interference in our country by man. 
The Short-spined Cottus (Cottus scorpius) shows the same 
abundance of demersal eggs and even greater numbers of 
