FISH — EMOTIONS. 
243 
fists placed together. The whole consisted, to all appearance, 
of nothing but gulf- weed, the branches and leaves of which were, 
however, evidently knit together, and not merely balled into a 
roundish mass. The elastic threads which held the gulf-weed 
together were beaded at intervals, sometimes two or three beads 
being close together, or a branch of them hanging from the 
cluster of threads. This nest was full of eggs scattered through- 
out the mass, and not placed together in a cavity. It was 
evidently the work of the Chironectes. This rocking fish-cradle 
is carried along as an undying arbour, affording at the same 
time protection and afterwards food for its living freight. It is 
suggested that the fish must have used their peculiar pectoral 
fins when constructing this elaborate nest. 
The well-known tinker or ten-spined stickleback ( Gastev - 
osteus pungitius ) is one of our indigenous fish which constructs 
a nest. On May 1, 1864, a male 1 was placed in a well-estab- 
lished aquarium of moderate size, to which, after thre3 days, 
two ripe females were added. Their presence at once roused 
him into activity, and he soon began to build a nest of bits of 
dirt and dead fibre, and of growing confer void filaments, upon a 
jutting point of rock among some interlacing branches of 
Myriopliyllum spicatum — all the time, however, frequently in- 
terrupting his labours to pay his addresses to the females. This 
was done in most vigorous fashion, he swimming, by a series of 
little jerks, near and about the female, even pushing against her 
with open mouth, but usually not biting. After a little 
coquetting she responds and follows him, swimming just above 
him as he leads the way to the nest. When there, the male 
commences to flirt — he seems unaware of its situation, will not 
swim to the right spot, and the female, after a few ineffectual 
attempts to find the proper passage into it, turns tail to swim 
away, but is then viciously pursued by the male. When he 
first courts the female, if she, not being ready, does not soon 
respond, he seems quickly to lose his temper, and, attacking 
her with great apparent fury, drives her to seek shelter in some 
crevice or dark corner. The coquetting of the male near the 
nest, which seems due to the fact that he really has not quite 
finished it, at length terminates by his pushing his head well 
into the entrance of the nest, while the female closely follows 
him, placing herself above him, and apparently much excited. 
A s he withdraws she passes into the nest, and pushes quite 
through it, after a very brief delay, during which she deposits 
her ova. The male now fertilises the eggs, and drives the female 
1 Ransom, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist , 1865, xvi., p. 449. 
