912 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [VoL. XXXV. 
course of time, and perhaps three of the nests were in these 
stumps, to which access was easily gained by the spaces between 
the roots. The others were among weeds and differed consid- 
erably. One or two.bullheads kept the weeds away from the 
eggs, so that it was not difficult to see the nest from the shore, 
while others were concealed so that it was almost impossible to 
see the eggs or fish without removing the weeds from above 
them. 
* There was a surprising difference in the disposition of the 
fishes on various nests. One of them was extremely tame. If 
approached cautiously he would not swim off, and it was quite 
easy for me to put my hand under him and lift him off the nest. 
He seemed to enjoy being scratched gently, and when lifted off 
the eggs would remain where placed or would swim off a short 
distance, and, in general, was very little disturbed by handling. 
Others were exceedingly shy, so that as soon as one had 
approached within a few yards of them they would dart off, 
throwing the eggs out of the nest as they went, with a jerk of 
the tail. Of course they always came back and brought the 
eggs together again. But this violent treatment of the bunch 
of eggs was apt to break it up, and I observed that a consider- 
able portion of the eggs was lost in such cases. One of the 
catfish, whose eggs were in a stump, was particularly ferocious, 
and this was the only one which I found that had a violent dis- 
position. I found the nest and put my hand down into the 
stump to take some of the eggs, when the fish seized it and 
worried it with all his force. After that, I found it necessary 
to remove the eggs from this nest with a pair of long forceps; 
which the fish would bite in spite of being rapped on the nose 
with them rather vigorously. It was this difference in disposi- 
tion that especially attracted my attention in studying the 
catfish.” 
In June, 1892, I secured a number of bullheads from the 
small ponds in the vicinity of Worcester, Mass. Some of these 
contained ripe ova and sperm, and an attempt was made to arti- 
ficially fertilize the eggs, but with ungratifying results. Many 
eggs passed through the cleavage stages, but all perished before 
the embryos were discernible. Although repeated efforts were 
