4 
NATURE NOTES 
A further account is given by Jonathan Couch. 
The method of proceeding in forming these nests appears to be that the fish 
either find growing, or certainly in some instances, collect together some of the 
softer kinds of green or red sea- weeds, and join them with so much of ihe 
coralline tufts (Janite) growing on the rocks as will serve the purpose of affording 
firmness to the structure, and constitute a mass five or six inches long, of a pear- 
like shape, and about as stout as a man’s fist. A thread is employed with much 
skill and patience in binding these materials together ; and there is no doubt that 
its substance is obtained from the creature’s own body. It much resembles silk, 
and is elastic. Under a good magnifier it appears to be formed of several 
smaller threads glued together, and it hardens into firmness by exposure to the 
water. But there is reason to believe that it is not exuded, nor the roe deposited, 
all at once ; for it is passed through the mass with intricacy in various directions, 
and the roe appears in little clumps, which are in different degrees of develop- 
ment. ... A singular instance of constructive skill and patience in the 
formation of its nest, which occurred within my knowledge, is deserving of 
remembrance. The situation selected was the loose end of a rope, from which 
the separated strands hung at about a yard from the surface, over a depth of 
from four or five fathoms ; and to which the materials could only have been 
brought, of course in the mouth of the fish, from the distance of about thirty feet. 
They were formed of the usual aggregation of the finer sorts of green and red 
ore-weed ; but they were so malted together in the hollow formed by the 
untwisted strands of the rope, that the mass constituted an oblong ball of nearly 
the size of the fist ; in which had been deposited the scattered assemblage of 
spawn, and which was bound into shape with the thread of animal substance 
already described, and which was passed through and through in various 
directions, while the rope itself formed an outside covering to the whole.^ 
Professor Mobius has observed the nests of this fish on the 
coast of Schleswig-Holstein. He states that the creature 
employs delicate plants which grow in shallow water, and that 
it masses these upon grasswrack or sea-weeds, or on the piles of 
landing-stages, until they form a soft rounded mass 5-8 centi- 
metres in diameter. Around this mass the fish spins in all 
possible directions a white, silky thread. In Kiel Harbour the 
nests are found in May and June ; and the females deposit 
their eggs between the plant-masses of the nest, in clusters of 
150-200.® 
Finally, another account has been published by Mr. E. E. 
Prince, from observations made at St. Andrews. The nests 
were found, from April to June, among sea-weeds fringing tidal 
rock-pools. The dimensions given by Mobius were often 
exceeded, the size depending on the character of the materials, 
and on the number of females ovipositing in the nest. Accord- 
ing to this observer, the fish often selects a growing mass of 
* J. Couch, “ History of the Fishes of the British Isles,” i. (1862), pp. 181-2. 
“ K. Mobius, “ Das Nest des Seestichlings,” Schrifien nalurwiss. Vereins 
fiir Schleswig-Holstein, vi. (1885), p. 56, transl. Annals and Magazine of Natural 
History (5), xvi. (1885), p. 153 ; “ Ueber die Eigenschaften u. den Ursprung der 
Schleimfiiden des Seestichlingnestes,” Archiv. fur mikroskop. Anatomic, xxv. 
(1885), pp. 554-63. In a more recent communication — Mobius, Sitzungs-berichie 
der Ge.sellschaft nalutforschender Freunde zu Berlin, 1893, PP- 167-8 — this 
naturalist has recorded the finding of a nest of Spinachia spinachia made in trees 
of Obelia pelalinosa on the shell of a living whelk (Bucciuum uiuiatum). He 
notes that the male in order to keep guard over the ne.st — and this is his 
invariable habit — would be bound to follow the wanderings of the mollusc. 
