Fishes. 885 



On the Nidification of Fishes. By James Hardy, Esq. 



In a recent number of ' The Zoologist,' (Zool. 795) Mr Couch has 

 presented your readers with some very interesting details respecting 

 the nidification of fishes. Aristotle was the first who detected the 

 practice some fishes have of constructing nests. " Aristotle," says 

 Baron Cuvier, in his ' Lectures on the History of the Natural Scien- 

 ces,' " in his account of fishes, is truly admirable, giving proof of 

 knowledge on many points superior to our own. Amongst the facts 

 which he relates, many are still in doubt; however, from time to time, 

 new observations teach us the justice of some of his assertions, even 

 of those which seem the most hazardous. He says, for example, that 

 a fish named Phycis makes a nest like birds. For a long time the 

 thing was treated as a fable ; however, very recently, M. Olivi disco- 

 vered that a fish named the goby {Gobius niger) has similar habits. 

 The male, in the season of love, makes a hole in the sand, surrounds 

 it with fucus, making a true nest, near which his mate waits, and he 

 never leaves his post till the eggs which have been deposited in it are 

 hatched." 



Mr. Hancock, in a paper on the mailed fishes of South America, 

 in the fourth volume of the ' Zoological Journal,' observes of the Doris 

 costata, and the Callichthys littoralis, both inhabiting the pools, lakes 

 and rivers of British Guiana, that they form a nest of grass or leaves, 

 and in it lay their eggs. " They guard their eggs as carefully as the 

 hen, attacking every assailant, till the spawn is hatched." 



In the 'Transactions of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club' (i. 201), 

 there is a notice by a distinguished naturalist, ' On the Nests of the 

 Fifteen-spined Stickleback, or Gasterosteus spinachia of LinnaBUs,' of 

 which, as a pleasing evidence of the faithful descriptions of two emi- 

 nent observers, and as an additional illustration to Mr. Couch's paper, 

 I append an extract. 



" In an early volume of the ' Edinburgh Philosophical Journal,' 

 there is a slight notice of fishes' nests found on the coast of Berwick- 

 shire, but the species of fish by whom they were constructed is not 

 mentioned. Mr. Duncan of Eyemouth has ascertained that they be- 

 long to the fifteen-spined stickleback — a fact confirmed by the Rev. 

 Mr. Turnbull, to whom the Club is indebted for specimens. 



" These nests are to be found in spring and summer, on several 

 parts of our coasts, in rocky and weedy pools between tide-marks. 

 They occur occasionally near Berwick, but seem to be more common 



