held by the seven years' brave patience
of him who so worthily earned the name of 'El Principe Constante,' the
Constant Prince.

MARY H. DEBENHAM.

PEEPS INTO NATURE'S NURSERIES.

II.--THE LIFE-HISTORY OF THE SOLE.

We can never fully understand an animal until we know its life-history,
but we can give some sort of an account, at least, of its development
from birth to death. With some creatures, as with butterflies, moths, or
birds, for example, this is easy enough, but with others this is by no
means true. The life-history of the Sole is a case in point; only by the
slow accumulation of facts has this been put together. But the result
is most interesting, and without more ado we now proceed to relate it.

The cradle of the young sole, like that of its relatives, the plaice,
turbot, and flounder, takes the form of a crystal globe of a jelly-like
material, in the centre of which lies a smaller globe containing the
germ which will grow into the young fish, a little store of food
material, and a small quantity of oil, which seems to keep the whole
afloat at the surface of the sea. This is the egg. It differs from the
eggs of its relatives, in that the oil which it contains is distributed
in the form of tiny drops, instead of being collected in one big drop,
as in the turbot's eggs, for instance. The careful mother lays these
eggs far out at sea and leaves them; if they were deposited near the
land they would drift ashore and be destroyed. And in the illustration
(fig. 1, egg) you will see what this water-baby looks like just before
he quits his cradle.

In less that a month the little sole has grown enough to enter the
world, but he is strangely helpless; a tiny little creature, perfectly
transparent, mouthless and finless, so that he must drift helplessly,
whithersoever the currents carry him. Though mouthless, he is not
hungry, for there remains within him a certain amount of the nourishing
yolk, which was stored up for this purpose, in his crystal cradle. This
little food reserve is the cause of the rounded swelling on the under
surface of the young sole in the illustration (fig. 1, A and B). In this
picture you should note, first of all, the curious shape of the head,
which is, as yet, only roughly modelled. There is no mouth, and the eye,
as yet, is colourless. Along the middle of the back there runs a high
fin, transparent as glass, and this is continued round the tail and
forwards to the swelling ca