FOUR-SPINED STICKLEBACK. 



ACANTHOPTERYGII. WITH HARD CHEEKS. 



THE FOUR-SPINED STICKLEBACK. 



Gasterosteus spinulosus, Jenyns and Yareell. 



I AM indebted to the kindness of Dr. James Stark for 

 specimens of a Stickleback with four spines, taken in the 

 pond of a meadow near Edinburgh in September 1830. 

 This peculiarity in the number of spines has not that I am 

 aware been made known, as occurring in this country, before 

 the exhibition of these specimens by Dr. James Stark at a 

 meeting of the Wernerian Natural History Society in 1831. 

 These examples were of small size, measuring only one inch 

 and one quarter in length, and were taken with the common 

 Three-spined Stickleback ; but other examples of this Four- 

 spined Stickleback were afterwards found by Dr. Stark in 

 other localities, where no species but those with four spines 

 could be taken. 



Dr. Stark succeeded in keeping these diminutive four-spined 

 fishes in tumblers, and fed them with small leeches and aqua- 

 tic insects, and found them quite as voracious, and even more 

 pugnacious, than the more common ones with three spines. 



In the MS. of John Walcott, Esq. which was written 

 during a residence at Teignmouth, and which MS. has been 

 most obligingly lent me by his son, I find a notice also of a 

 Four-spined Stickleback ; but no description is given, nor is 



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