Animal Life 21 
highly excited state and vigorously attackimg and driving away with one exception 
eyery other fish that approached or attempted to established a foothold (or more 
correctly “finhold”) on the rocky platform. Blennies’ eggs, especially “poached” or 
“scrambled” from a comrade’s nursery, were evidently an irresistable bon bouche, and 
hence day in and day out a constant siege with almost ceaseless assaults were waged 
against the rocky fortress. Some 
brief intervals of respite were ob- 
tained when food at the accustomed 
feeding hours was distributed among 
the general commonwealth, and on 
these occasions the male fish would 
descend to the bottom of the tank 
and hurriedly snatching wp a morsel 
would carry it up and place it at the 
disposal of his lady-love. The gallant 
little knight held the citadel, though 
not without the occasional looting of 
a portion of its pearly treasures, for 
nearly a month, and then succumbed 
worn out with fatigue, to 
the force of numbers. 
One morning our little 
hero was found lying dead 
and mangled at the bot- 
tom of the tank, the little 
eyrie had been mercilessly 
stripped of every egg and 
one huge fellow nearly 
twice the size of its erst- 
while valhant defender 
now occupied the vacated ie 
: Seid 
ledge. instance 2 : - 
Be Such Sim us Photo, W. Saville-Kent, F.Z.S. 
of attachment and gallant BLENNY MOUNTING GUARD OVER ITS MATB’S EGGS. 
devotion to its home and 
mate has scarcely been previously recorded or so much as suspected of a coid-blooded 
fish. But, could we peer omnisciently into the sea’s profundities, we should doubless 
find’ the romance of life still strongly in evidence, and that love as well as hunger 
represent in the ocean’s abyss, as also on the earth, the two all dominating forces. 
a t 
[The second part of this article will appear in /b Ve 
due course. It will contain a great deal of “DTP if - 
interesting information about animals which 
have hitherto been little studied. } 
