FISHES. 
267 
And bo like water spilt upon the ground, 
Which none can gather up, the speediest fate, 
Though violent and terrible, U 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 aboliahod ; this gay world 
A valley of dry bones — a Golgotha— 
In which the living stumbled o’or tho 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 sian’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 tho 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 tho ncst-building instincts and 
tender care of the commonest of British fishes — the tiny 
Stickleback, that swarms in every pool. 
