Chapt. xvi. Various spawning peculiarities. 217 



when these rice fields will be utilized for the preservation 

 instead of the destruction of fry. 



While some fish like the salmon, the trout, and the 

 Mahseer, lay their eggs in hollows worked out in the 

 gravel, others lay them in the sand where it is pretty to 

 see the tiny fry still nestled together after birth, so close- 

 ly that they look like one black spot, in a hollow like an 

 inverted cone of one or two inches in diameter, with their 

 umbilical sacks still unabsorbed. Other fish again, like the 

 perch, lay their eggs in long strings like beads, and adher- 

 ing by a glutinous matter to bushes. The stickle-back 

 builds a nest among the reeds and keeps fierce guard over 

 it. It is the male stickle-back that builds the nest, and- 

 that unaided by the female, for in due conformity to the' 

 rules of modern society he makes no matrimonial over- 

 tures, till he has provided for the becoming maintenance 

 of a wife, and no girl stickle-back with any self-respect 

 would think of accepting him without a furnished house. 

 The murrel takes up its quarters in a hollow in the bank, 

 and protects its young by keeping them in a crowd, and 

 swimming under them till about two inches long, when, 

 like other predatory animals, it kills them if they do not 

 separate. Some sharks bring forth young alive, some 

 deposit them in a purse with tendrils for attachment to sea- 

 weeds, and their young flee for refuge into their mouths. 

 Certain cat-fish, I have observed, hatch their ova in their 

 mouths, and keep them there even after being hatched. 

 About this fish I hope to furnish more details in another 

 place. Some sea-fish spawn in the open sea, leaving their 



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