te
name of _Chromides_.

These fish are further remarkable for their nursing habits. It was
formerly believed that the male takes charge of the eggs, and later the
young, by sheltering them in the mouth and pharynx. This may still be
true of some of the American species, but a long series of recent
observations have shown that this most efficacious parental care
devolves invariably on the female in the African and Syrian species. We
are now acquainted with a large number of species in which this
extraordinary habit has been observed, the number having lately been
greatly increased by the collections made in Lakes Tanganyika and
Victoria.

L. Lortet had described a fish from Lake Tiberias in which he believed
he had observed the male take up the eggs after their deposition and
retain them in his mouth and pharynx long after eclosion, in fact until
the young are able to shift for themselves, and this fish he named
_Chromis paterfamilias_. A. Guenther had also ascribed the same sex to a
fish from Natal, _Chromis philander_, observed by N. Abraham to have
similar habits. G.A. Boulenger has since had an opportunity to examine
the latter specimen and found it to be a female, as in all other nursing
individuals from various parts of Africa, previously observed by
himself; whilst J. Pellegrin has acertained the female sex of a specimen
with eggs in the mouth presented to the Paris museum by Lortet as his
_Chromis paterfamilias_ (= _Tilapia simonis_). Further observations by
Pellegrin on _Tilapia galilaea_ and _Pelmatochromis lateralis_, by E.
Schoeller on _Paralilapia multicolor_, have led to the same result.

It therefore remains unproven whether in any of the African _Cichlidae_
the buccal "incubation," as it has been called by Pellegrin, devolves on
the male; the instances previously adduced being unsupported by the only
trustworthy evidence--an examination of the genital glands.

The relative size and number of the eggs thus taken charge of vary very
much according to the species. Thus they may be moderately large and
numerous (100 to 200) in _Tilapia nilotica_ and _galilaea_, larger and
only about 30 in number in _Paratilapia multicolor_, while in _Tropheus
moorii_, a fish measuring only 110 mm., the eggs filling the mouth and
pharynx measure 4 mm. in diameter and are only four in number, they
being proportionally the largest Teleostome eggs known. In _Paratilapia
pfefferi_, a fish measuring 75 mm., the eggs found in t