their offspring should both be citizens of Guiana,
where the rivers and marshes must probably harbour some special danger
to be thus avoided, not found in equal intensity in other fresh waters.

A prettily marked fish of the Indian Ocean, allied, though not very
closely, to the pipe fishes, has also the distinction of handing over
the young to the care of the mother instead of the father. Its name is
Solenostoma (I regret that no more popular title exists), and it has a
pouch, formed in this case by a pair of long broad fins, within which
the eggs are attached by interlacing threads that push out from the
body. Probably in this instance nutriment is actually provided through
these threads for the use of the embryo, in which case we must regard
the mechanism as very closely analogous indeed to that which obtains
among mammals.

Some few fish, indeed, are truly viviparous; among them certain
blennies and carps, in which the eggs hatch out entirely within the
body of the mother. One of the most interesting of these divergent
types is the common Californian and Mexican silver-fish, an inhabitant
of the bays and inlets of sub-tropical America. Its chief peculiarity
and title to fame lies in the extreme bigness of its young at birth.
The full-grown fish runs to about ten inches in length, fisherman's
scale, while the fry measure as much as three inches apiece; so that
they lie, as Professor Seeley somewhat forcibly expresses it, 'packed
in the body of the parent as close as herrings in a barrel.' This
strange habit of retaining the eggs till after they have hatched out is
not peculiar to fish among egg-laying animals, for the common little
brown English lizard is similarly viviparous, though most of its
relatives elsewhere deposit their eggs to be hatched by the heat of the
sun in earth or sandbanks.

Mr. Hannibal Chollop, if I recollect aright, once shot an imprudent
stranger for remarking in print that the ancient Athenians, that
inferior race, had got ahead in their time of the modern Loco-foco
ticket. But several kinds of fish have undoubtedly got ahead in this
respect of the common reptilian ticket; for instead of leaving about
their eggs anywhere on the loose to take care of themselves, they build
a regular nest, like birds, and sit upon their eggs till the fry emerge
from them. All the sticklebacks, for instance, are confirmed
nest-builders: but here once more it is the male, not the female, who
weaves the materials