1 82 THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS. 



careful also only to collect pieces which have been 

 whitened and dried by the sun.i 



Certain Humming-birds also; according to Gould, 

 decorate their dwellings with great taste. " They 

 instinctively fasten thereon," he stated, "beautiful 

 pieces of flat lichen, the larger pieces in the middle, 

 and the smaller on the part attached to the branch. 

 Now and then a pretty feather is intertwined or 

 fastened to the outer sides, the stem being always 

 so placed that the feather stands out beyond the 

 surface."^ 



Dwellings woven of flexible substances. — In spite of 

 their lack of skill and the inadequacy of their organs 

 for this kind of work, Fish are not the most awkward 

 architects. The species which construct nests for 

 laying in are fairly numerous ; the classical case of 

 the Stickleback is always quoted, but this is not the 

 only animal of its class to possess the secret of the 

 manufacture of a shelter for its eggs. 



A fish of Java, the Gourami {Osphronemus olfax), 

 establishes an ovoid nest with the leaves of aquatic 

 plants woven together. It makes its work about the 

 size of a fist, take s no rest until it is completed, and 

 is able to finish it in five or six days. It is the male 

 alone who weaves this dwelling ; when it is ready a 

 female comes to lay there, and generally fills it ; it 

 may contain from six hundred to a thousand eggs. 



In the sea of Sargasso lives a fish which has re- 

 ceived the name of the Antennarius viarnioratus. Its 



' Gould first accurately described the habits of the Bower-birds, 

 Proceed. Zool. Soc, London, 1840, p. 94; also Handbook to the Birds 

 of Australia (1865), vol. i. pp. 444-461. See also Darwin's Descent of 

 Man (18S1), pp. 381 and 413-414. 



^ Gould, Introduction to the Trochiliace, 1861, p. 19. 



