I fear, by most people be laughed at. Should there be any doubt respecting the species, you will recognise it at once by the three spines, or sharp long prickles which are on its back, and by the ventral fin being "a plate-like spine of three parts."

Small though the species is, it sometimes is applied to an economical use by man, since, occasionally, it appears in such vast shoals as even to be used for manure, and also for fattening ducks and pigs. Pennant states, that in the river Welland, every seven or eight years, the sticklebacks which have been washed out of the fens of Lincolnshire are in such multitudes as to be used for manuring the land; that trials have been made to get oil from them, and that so innumerable are their myriads, that a man, for a considerable time, could make four shillings a day, by selling them at a halfpenny per bushel. They are said to be taken in great quantities about Dantzig, for the purpose of extracting an oil from them. Mr. Daniel, in the second volume of his Rural Sports, states, that in the river Cam he had seen them taken by myriads, with large landing-nets fixed on short handles, for the purpose of manuring the land.

This little creature is said to be very pugnacious, and to attack fishes much larger than

itself. The spines of the back can be raised or depressed at pleasure; but I should suppose that the spines of the ventral fin would best answer the purpose of offensive weapons. And here I must observe, we have a very remarkable and beautiful piece of mechanism. The articulation of these fins is of a very rare kind. If a specimen that has been dead for some time, and is somewhat dried up by exposure to the air, be examined, you will observe that there is a very remarkable girdle of bony plates surrounding the body, and connected with the spines. This girdle, indeed, seems to be subservient altogether to them, and is intended to give them a firm foundation. The central portion of the ventral, or belly fins, seems to be a soldering, as it were, of the two together into one solid triangular plate, and into this the ventral spines can be fixed by their base at pleasure. The root of the spine has a hook, and there is a hole in the immoveable plate for receiving it. To implant it there is at the option of the fish, and the process of so doing might not inaptly be compared to that of a soldier fixing his bayonet. When the stickleback wishes to place this spine or weapon in a position for combat, it extends it, and fixes the hook in its rest, where

long as the animal pleases; but when it desires the contrary, it turns the hook out of the cavity, and then the spine falls flat to the belly.*

It is said that the ova of this diminutive fish are larger than those of a cod, and, indeed, I may observe, that the bulk of an ovum, or egg, often bears no kind of proportion to the size of the animal it produces; and the same observation will apply to the seeds of plants; a bean, for example, is as large as an acorn, which produces an oak; and a pea is as big as a cherrystone, and much larger than the pippin, which gives origin to an apple-tree.

The stickleback is very voracious, and will readily seize a bait on a small hook, and thus it is sometimes taken by anglers for the purpose of making it a bait, in its turn, for larger fishes, as the pike and trout.

From the great voracity of the stickleback, it is an injurious inmate of fish-ponds, as it devours the ova or spawn of other fishes; but whether it really inflicts wounds on the larger species with its spines I know not. It is a very short-lived creature, and seldom survives the third year, at least such is the general assertion of ichthyologists, though I am not aware on what

*See Cuvier's Comparative Anatomy, translated by W. Ross, vol. i. p. 132.

certain authority the opinion rests; whether true or not, this species has been called the ephemera of fishes. Its neighbour, the lesser, or ten-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus pungitius), is considered as the smallest of fishes; it is seldom found so long as an inch and a half.

The common stickleback deposits many ova on aquatic plants, and at the bottom, in the early part of summer; and the female, if Donovan be correct, when in roe, assumes a beautiful red colour on the lower part of the head and the belly. It is said to be pestered with worms; and I have often observed it covered with large tumours of a pearly colour and lustre, caused by collections of a white matter under the skin.

Along with the stickleback, you have another acquaintance here in the deep parts of the stream-I mean your old friend the trout-and I presume there are few objects in nature more closely connected with your early recollections, for I know that the first attempts at angling, and the delight felt on hooking a fish and tossing it to the green bank, though it may have been after hours of patient waiting, are never to be forgotten, and can never be remembered without emotions of pleasure. Though I would be an enemy to cruelty of any kind, and though I could now have no pleasure in capturing

these inhabitants of the lucid wave, yet I am much inclined to think that the practice of occasionally angling, when I was a boy, in a rocky romantic river passing through a fine narrow valley of some miles in length, tended very much to foster in me a love for nature and natural history, which has always formed a very sweet ingredient in the mixed cup of life, and which, I am very certain, will give still increasing pleasure and happiness in its pursuit till life shall cease.

And certainly there can be few places more favourable to the formation of agreeable impressions from external objects than the scenery of a romantic stream. The ever toiling but never tired element, on its way to the ocean, in which it is to be swallowed up, whether it foam, and rage, and dash into spray as it rolls down a precipitous rock, or ripples around the stones in the river's bed, or glides imperceptibly under hanging banks, where antique roots shoot out, and bunches of fern show their feathery foliage reflected from beneath, it is in all circumstances interesting and delightful. It is under no aspect, however, so pleasing to the boy, and too often, I regret to say, to the man also, as when, on a dark grey day, the trout is rising at the fly. With all my early recollections about me, still I cannot con