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The National Geographic Magazine 



southern Europe to Florida? and (2) 

 Will the transplanted sponges retain their 

 original qualities in a new environment, 

 or will they, after a few generations, 

 take on the harsh characters of the analo- 

 gous Florida species, which are not at all 

 suitable for toilet purposes? 



It is quite remarkable that the cheap- 

 est and least useful of the Florida 

 sponges — the so-called grass and glove 

 sponges — should physically and commer- 

 cially dififer so markedly from their Med- 

 iterranean prototypes, while biologically 

 they are so closely related. 



While the transportation of living 

 sponges from so great a distance cer- 



tainly involves difficulties, they are per- 

 haps not insurmountable. Experiments 

 conducted by the Bureau of Fisheries 

 have shown that sponges may safely be 

 kept out of the water for 3 days, pro- 

 vided they are cool and moist — and it is 

 probable that this time can be consider- 

 ably extended under favorable condi- 

 tions — while the installation of a small 

 circulating plant on an ocean liner may 

 make the transportation still easier. As 

 to the other question, time alone can de- 

 termine. 



The project involves the cultivation of 

 the imported sponges, and for this the 

 Bureau has already prepared the way. 



FISHES THAT BUILD NESTS AND TAKE 

 CARE OF THEIR YOUNG* 



I HE belief long prevailed that 

 fishes are indifferent to their 

 eggs and young and leave them 

 entirely to the care of Mother Nature. 

 One who was more excellent as a man of 

 letters than as a naturalist, but who 

 wrote, nevertheless, a very readable work 

 on Animated Nature, Oliver Goldsmith, 

 in 1774, told his readers that "fishes seem, 

 all except the whale kind, entirely di- 

 vested of those parental solicitudes which 

 so strongly mark the manners of the more 

 perfect terrestrial animals." Many to 

 the present time entertain that belief. 



More than a score of centuries before 

 Goldsmith, however, the greatest nat- 

 uralist of antiquity, Aristotle, told of a 

 kind of fish, inhabiting the largest river 

 of Greece, the Macedonian Achelous, 

 which, in the person of the male parent, 

 exerted the greatest care of both eggs 

 and young. That account, however, was 

 overlooked or neglected, and even re- 

 garded with skepticism and as fabulous. 

 The strange history of that fish — known 



to Aristotle as the glanis — will be told 

 at length in later pages of this article. 

 Its truthfulness has been vouched for, 

 not by later observers of itself, but by 

 studies of related fishes having analogous 

 habits in a quarter of the world unknown 

 to and undreamed of by Aristotle. Al- 

 though the most detailed history of any 

 fish by any ancient writer is connected 

 with it in the philosopher's History of 

 Animals, no reference to it appears in any 

 modern popular work. 



Many important details respecting the 

 life histories and parental care of a large 

 number of other fishes have been pub- 

 lished from time to time and may be 

 found in the publications of various so- 

 cieties or other periodicals, but such are 

 closed books to most persons. Anyone 

 who looks for information in the popular 

 works on natural history of the day must 

 inevitably be disappointed at the meager- 

 ness of the information given. Even in 

 the voluminous German work, so well 

 known as Brehm's Tierleben, the infor- 



* This article is abstracted from "Parental Care Among Fresh Water Fishes." By Theodore 

 Gill. Smithsonian Institution, 1907. Dr Gill's paper makes a monograph of about 125 pages, and 

 contains many ilhistrations. It is full of facinating and new information on the subject. 



