242 ACANTHOPTERYGII. 



sway, a regular and most furious battle ensues, sometimes lasting several minutes 

 before either will give way : and when one does submit, imagination can hardly 

 conceive the vindictive fury of the conqueror, who, in the most persevering and 

 unrelenting way, chases his rival from one part of the tub to another, until fairly 

 exhausted with fatigue. 



Mr. Mable at the "Weston-super-Mare Museum had some three-spined stickle- 

 backs in an aquarium and some roach, Leuciscus rutilus, were added. With this 

 invasion the prior inhabitants were dissatisfied but not frightened, as they forth- 

 with attacked the new comers, biting at them anywhere until they became 

 thoroughly cowed. These little tyrants were observed to place themselves in 

 front of the roach, steady themselves by their tails, and then suddenly dart 

 straight at the lips of their intended prey, from which they bit pieces out. These 

 attacks were continued until all the roach had been killed, when they were eaten by 

 their conquerors (Day, P. Z. S. 1879, p. 753). Mr. Odelly (Hard. Sc. Gossip, 

 1868, p. 215) mentions placing some carp and tench in a tank containing stickle- 

 backs. Almost immediately these little furies attacked the carp and gave them 

 no rest until they died, which occurred in three or four days, not one of them 

 having more than a vestige of fin and tail left. The tench were left alone. 



It has been observed that during the autumn months many adult fish may be 

 found dead, which has been attributed to the love of fighting so very conspicuous 

 in this irritable little race of fishes. 



Means of capture. — Young anglers with a stick and short piece of thread on to 

 which is tied a worm by its middle, are very successful in taking many of these 

 fishes in the summer months, as they hold on with great pertinacity to any object 

 which they have once seized. They may also be taken by small meshed nets. 

 Pennant (1776) observed that once in seven or eight years amazing shoals appear 

 in the Welland and come up the river in the form of a vast column. They are 

 supposed to be the multitudes which have been washed out of the fens by the 

 floods of several years, and collected in some deep hole, till overcharged with 

 numbers they are periodically obliged to attempt a change of place. The quantity 

 is so great that they are used to manure the land, and trials have been made to 

 get oil from them. A notion may be had of this vast shoal, by saying that a 

 man employed by the farmer to take them, has got for a considerable time four 

 shillings a day by selling them at a halfpenny a bushel. 



Breeding.*' — Although they usually commence doing so in April or May, 

 Thompson remarks having seen one large with spawn in Ireland as late as 

 September : and Wakefield (Zool. 1853, xi, p. 3760) that he has known their 

 eggs hatched in March and April. 



Mr. Smee observed of the nest of this species as found in the river in his 

 garden, that it was merely a thin covering of fibres arranged over a hole placed 

 in a hollow. The Curator of the Norwich Museum observed (1857) of some in 

 an aquarium, that the male having selected a spot in the centre of the trough, here 

 he made a collection of delicate fibrous material resting on the ground and matted 

 into an irregularly circular mass, somewhat depressed and upwards of an inch in 

 diameter,f the top being covered with similar materials and having in the centre 

 a rather large hole. He kept constant watch over the nest, every now and then 

 shaking up the materials and dragging out the eggs, which were the size of poppy 

 seeds, and then pushing them into their receptacle again and tucking them up 

 with his snout, arranging the w r hole to his mind, and again and again adjusting it 

 until he was satisfied : after which he hung or hovered over the surface of the 

 nest, his head close to the orifice, fanning it with his pectoral fins aided by a 

 slight motion of the tail. Mr. Kinahan (Zool. p. 3526) says the male selects a 

 suitable spot where the water, not too deep, runs with a current over a gravelly 

 bottom. The foundation is usually laid of straws, having their ends carefully 

 tucked into the gravel : other straws are laid across and similarly secured by the 



* The first British naturalist -who wrote about the nests of sticklebacks was Richard Bradley, 

 F.E.8., in 1721, in his Philosophical Account of the works of Nature, p. 61. London, 4to. 



f In the Youth's Instructor for 1834, the size of these nests as found in the London Docks was 

 given as " somewhat larger than a shilling." 



