TTIREE-SPINEn STICKLEBACK. 
171 
trust' committed to the male fish, ^until by growth they are 
able to take their place among the full-grown tribes^ of then- 
race. And well ought they to be fitted for this position, for 
it not unfrequently involves danger on every side. There are 
circumstances, indeed, which render it probable that at times, 
perhaps periodically, an epidemic fury seizes them, and that 
a general slaughter of the weakest is the result. Mr. Peach, 
to whom I have already had occasion to refer, informs me, 
that in the north of Scotland, where this fish is common 
they get into pools of the rocks at the highest water-mark of 
the^ tide, and build their nests. Unconnected with the sea, 
except at spring tides, the water becomes warm from the heat 
of the sun; and there the young are hatched under the 
guardianship of the parents, until they are strong enough to 
quit the place; after which, toward the decline of the year, 
not one is to be found, except, indeed, some scores of the 
adult fish, which are left dead, without any other obvious 
cause besides their mutual love of fighting. 
But little attention indeed is sufficient to discover that this 
little family of fishes is an irritable race, and disposed to a 
display of the domineering impulses of tyranny and oppression, 
in the exercise of which they are not slow to manifest their 
consciousness of the formidable nature of the arms they bear, 
and of their power to wield them with deadly effect. VVoe 
betide an enemy that ventures on an attack. I placed an 
individual of the best-armed variety in a vessel in which two 
small crabs were already confined, and being not a little 
hungry, one of the crabs shewed an inclination to make the 
new-made prisoner his prey. But in a,ll his attacks the 
Stickleback was equal to the occasion. He kept his welhaimed 
tail towards the enemy, and depressed and employed it in a 
manner unlike what most fishes could accomplish, but in 
which the inferior processes of the vertebrae where shewn to be 
no hindrance. 
The following will further illustrate these manners ot the 
Sticklebacks, as they are brought into active opposition with 
each other, and where the contest is with no other apparent 
obiect than a display of the pride of victory. “Having,” says 
a writer in Loudon’s “Magazine of Natural History,” vol. iii, 
“at various times kept this little fish during the spring and 
