FISHES. 



267 



And be like water spilt upon the ground, 

 Which none can gather up, the speediest fate, 

 Though violent and terrible, is best. 

 Oh, with what horrors would creation groan, 

 What agonies would ever be before us — ■ 

 Famine and pestilence, disease, despair, 

 Anguish and pain, in every hideous shape- 

 Had all to wait the slow decay of nature ! 

 Life were a martyrdom of sympathy ; 

 Death lingering, raging, writhing, shrieking torture : 

 The grave would be abolished ; this gay world 

 A valley of dry bones — a Golgotha — 

 In which the living stumbled o'er the dead 

 Till they could fall no more, and blind perdition 

 Swept frail mortality away for ever. 

 'Twas wisdom, mercy, goodness, that ordain'd 

 Life in such infinite profusion — Death 

 So sure, so prompt, so multiform, to those 

 That never siun'd, that know not guilt, that fear 

 No wrath to come, and have no heaven to lose." 



Montgomery. 



The statement has been common, in books of natural 

 history, that fishes manifest no parental affection or care; 

 that the spawn, having been deposited in the proper situa- 

 tion, the parents' work is done, and all their solicitude 

 ceases. It is possible that this may be the general rule; 

 but it is not without numerous exceptions. As early as 

 the time of Fabricius, it was known that the male Lump- 

 sucker kept a strict watch over the spawn when laid, de- 

 fending it with the most obstinate courage. And recent 

 observations have added not a few other examples of pa- 

 rental care among fishes, not exceeded by the devotion of 

 the mother bird. Within a few months of the writing of 

 these pages, a most interesting detail has been published 

 by Mr Warington, of the nest-building instincts and 

 tender care of the commonest of British fishes — the tiny 

 Stickleback, that swarms in every pool. 



