CHAPTER ML 
STICKLEBACKS AND THEIK NEST- 
BUILDINGr. 
ome of the pleasantest associations, 
bound up with the recollections of my 
boyhood, are those connected with my 
excursions for the capture of Stickle¬ 
backs. All the scenes of those days of 
;/ sunshine are still green in my memory, 
and even the very names of the obscure 
streamlets and lanes have a sound more intimately 
familiar than things of yesterday. Sparkbrook, 
Stoney Lane, Lady-pool Lane, Great Mill, are names 
still attached to the reminiscences of days of peering 
into the mysteries of the world beneath the waters, 
and into the life and movements of half-hidden 
creatures, whose instincts and habits possessed an 
irresistible attraction which I could not resist. 
More than once I was on the point of making 
the interesting discovery concerning the nidification, 
which M. Coste has had the gratification of adding 
to the archives of Natural History. I had seen the 
male Stickleback darting hither and thither, with & 
66 
