796 Fishes. 



and show a remarkable care and anxiety for their young. Nests are 

 built in which the ova are deposited, and over which the adult fish 

 will watch till the young make their escape. And where circum- 

 stances will not allow of this continued care, as from the reflux of 

 the sea, the old fish will return with the return of the tide, and remain 

 as long as the water will permit. 



During the summers of 1842 and 1843, while searching for the 

 naked mollusks of the county, I occasionally discovered portions of 

 sea- weed, and the common coralline (C. officinalis), hanging from the 

 rocks in pear-shaped masses, variously intermingled with each other. 

 On one occasion, having observed that the mass was very curiously 

 bound together by a slender silky-looking thread, it was torn open, 

 and the centre was found to be occupied by a mass of transparent 

 amber-coloured ova, each being about the tenth of an inch in diame- 

 ter. Though examined on the spot with a lens, nothing could be 

 discovered to indicate their character. They were, however, kept in 

 a basin, and daily supplied with sea-water, and eventually proved to 

 be the young of some fish. The nest varies a great deal in size, but 

 rarely exceeds six inches in length, or four inches in breadth. It is 

 pear-shaped, and composed of sea-weed, or the common coralline, as 

 they hang suspended from the rock. They are brought together, 

 without being detached from their places of growth, by a delicate 

 opaque white thread. This thread is highly elastic, and very much 

 resembles silk, both in appearance and texture ; this is brought round 

 the plants, and tightly binds them together, plant after plant, till the 

 ova, which are deposited early, are completely hid from view. This 

 silk-like thread is passed in all directions through and around the 

 mass in a very complicated manner. At first the thread is semi-fluid 

 but by exposure it solidifies; and hence contracts and binds the sub- 

 stances, forming the nest so closely together, that it is able to with- 

 stand the violence of the sea, and may be thrown carelessly about 

 without derangement. In the centre are deposited the ova, very simi- 

 lar to the masses of frog-spawn in ditches. 



It is not necessary to enter into the minute particulars of the de- 

 v elopement of the young, any further than by observing that they 

 were the subject of observation, till they became excluded from the 

 egg, and that they belonged to the fifteen-spined stickleback (Gas- 

 terosteus Spinachia). Some of these nests are formed in pools, and 

 are consequently always in water ; others are frequently to be found 

 between tide marks, in situations where they hang dry for several 

 hours during the day ; but whether in the water, or liable to hang 



