THE FIFTEEN-SEINED STICKLEBACK. 
22 7 
and the eggs thrown into the stream, the Sticklebacks rush at 
them from all sides, and fight for them like boys scrambling 
for halfpence. The eggs are very small, barely the size ot 
dust-shot, and are yellow when first placed in the nest, but 
deepen in colour as they approach maturity. 
There is a well-known marine species of this group, called 
the Fifteen-Spined Stickleback ( Gasterosteus spinachia ), a 
long-bodied, long-snouted fish, with a slightly projecting lower 
jaw, and a row of fifteen short and sharp spines along the back. 
This creature makes its nest of the smaller algse, such as the 
corallines, and the delicate green and purple seaweeds which 
fringe our coasts. 
Sometimes, indeed, it becomes rather eccentric in its archi- 
tecture, and builds in very curious situations. Mr. Couch, the 
well-known ichthyologist, mentions a case where a pair of 
Sticklebacks had made their nest ‘ in the loose end of a rope, 
from which the separated strands hung out about a yard from 
the surface, over a depth of 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 seaweed, but they were so matted 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 a thread of 
animal substance, which was passed through and through in 
various directions, while the rope itself formed an outside 
covering to the whole.' 
