together and takes care of the eggs during their
period of incubation. The receptacle itself is made of fibres of
water-weeds or stalks of grass, and is open at both ends to let a
current pass through. As soon as the lordly little polygamist has built
it, he coaxes and allures his chosen mates into the entrance, one by
one, to lay their eggs; and then when the nest is full, he mounts guard
over them bravely, fanning them with his fins, and so keeping up a
continual supply of oxygen which is necessary for the proper
development of the embryo within. It takes a month's sitting before the
young hatch out, and even after they appear, this excellent father
(little Turk though he be, and savage warrior for the stocking of his
harem) goes out attended by all his brood whenever he sallies forth for
a morning constitutional in search of caddis-worms, which shows that
there may be more good than we imagine, after all, in the domestic
institutions even of people who don't agree with us.

The bullheads or miller's thumbs, those quaint big-headed beasts which
divide with the sticklebacks the polite attentions of ingenious British
youth, are also nest-builders, and the male fish are said to anxiously
watch and protect their offspring during their undisciplined nonage.
Equally domestic are the habits of those queer shapeless creatures, the
marine lump-suckers, which fasten themselves on to rocks, like limpets,
by their strange sucking disks, and defy all the efforts of enemy or
fishermen to dislodge them by main force from their well-chosen
position. The pretty little tropical walking-fish of the filuroid
tribe--those fish out of water--carry the nest-making instinct a point
further, for they go ashore boldly at the beginning of the rainy season
in their native woods, and scoop out a hole in the beach as a place of
safety, in which they make regular nests of leaves and other
terrestrial materials to hold their eggs. Then father and mother take
turns-about at looking after the hatching, and defend the spawn with
great zeal and courage against all intruders.

I regret to say, however, there are other unprincipled fish which
display their affection and care for their young in far more
questionable and unpleasant manners. For instance, there is that
uncanny creature that inserts its parasitic fry as a tiny egg inside
the unsuspecting shells of mussels and cockles. Our fishermen are only
too well acquainted, again, with one unpleasant ma