NATURE'S REALM. 
ment a male fish was tearing off small pieces 
of conferve that grew on the water plants, 
which he carried in his mouth to the nest, 
packing it down with hissnout. After placing 
several mouthfuls in this way he fastened the 
pieces together more compactly by pressing 
them down with the under side of his body, at 
the same time exuding a marine glue, so to 
speak, that cemented all together. In the cen- 
tre and on the top of each nest were four ori- 
fices, and into these the male, after a consider- 
able display of anger and much labor, at last 
drove the female, her head projecting far 
enough out to allow her to breathe. A few 
minutes later the male drove her out of the 
nest again, head first, and entered himself, 
passing over the eggs in the same direction 
the female had, and fertilized them by spread- 
ing his milt over them. In an instant he was 
out, flashing all over with blue, green and 
orange, his eyes looking like small turquoises. 
When the openings of the nest became too 
large, he contracted them by patching on more 
conferve. Over the nest he remained day and 
night, changing from one opening to another, 
constantly fanning a current of water through 
153 
them. Whenever poor Mrs. Stickleback 
showed herself her mate drove at her fiercely, 
biting her until she was glad to hide among 
the water plants. The trouble was that she 
would have eaten all the eggs if she had had a 
chance, and he knew it. For this reason I 
took all the females out as soon as they had 
deposited their eggs. As each nest was com- 
pleted and the eggs deposited I withdrew the 
glass partitions, but a terrible battle taking 
place between the males, I had to replace,them. 
Even then they would try to fight each other 
through the glass. When all the eggs were 
hatched, and the bottom of each compartment 
seemed alive with young sticklebacks, I re- 
moved all the male fish and glass partitions, 
and in a few weeks was the happy possessor of 
a lar e school of inquisitive, restless, baby 
sticklebacks.” 
To this we add, from our own experience, 
that all the females, after depositing their eggs, 
refused to eat chopped earth worms, on which 
we used to feed them, and died in one or two 
days after. The young fish made their ap- 
pearance twelve days after the eggs were de- 
posited. 
