THE GOBIES, SUCKERS, AND BLENNIES 157 



well as those of the blennies, are found in various shells and 

 under stones. Like the herring, in fact, these small fishes 

 deposit eggs too heavy to float in salt water, so that the 

 biologist obtains them from the dredge, and not, as in the 

 case of pelagic, or floating, eggs, in the surface tow-net. In 

 the blennies it is the female that, as a rule, takes sole charge of 

 the eggs, while in the gobies and suckers this duty devolves 

 upon the male. 



So small and inconspicuous are these fishes that we may 

 reasonably expect three results from any closer investigation of 

 their individual peculiarities. In the first place, we shall in all 

 probability find that earlier writers confused distinct species 

 under one name, and it looks, in fact, as if Day had confused 

 the four-spotted goby with another species (G. jeffreysit), the 

 former a common wanderer from the Mediterranean region, 

 the latter a much rarer visitor from the Atlantic, having been 

 taken by Herdman off the Isle of Man, and, as recently only as 

 1897, by Holt in the Plymouth district. 



Secondly, we shall find species described in earlier works 

 as extremely rare without being so in reality. A case in 

 point is Nilsson's goby (Crystallogohius), which Day describes 

 as a rare species of northern haunts, naming only a single 

 British specimen, but of which, in 1891, Cunningham took 

 no fewer than 201 specimens at a single haul of a fine-meshed 

 shrimp-trawl in 28 fathoms of water some 10 miles from the 

 Eddy stone. Holt records the same goby a year earlier (1890) 

 in Ballinskelligs Bay, and a year later (1892) off Flamborough 

 Head. As Nilsson's goby is a tiny, transparent, scaleless 

 fish, measuring when full-grown only about i^ in. in length, 

 it might easily be overlooked in a district for years. Although, 

 moreover, its distribution, however local and capricious, can 

 hardly have altered so completely since the time at which 

 Day wrote his great work, it is only fair to that author to 

 recollect that the occurrence of these gobies on any part of 

 the coast is subject to sudden and unaccountable variation. 



