Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/41

Rh might prove extremely dangerous to it. Yet it gradually approached the hook, took it delicately up, and the next instant dropped it over the edge of the bed.”

Some other examples of parental care and fore-sight have been lately brought under the attention of naturalists, which will be noticed in the following pages. The subject is one of great interest, and would probably repay careful observation with many facts hitherto unsuspected in this extensive but comparatively little-known Class of Vertebrate animals.

Mr. Jesse, in his “Gleanings,” has given the following Table, showing the different degrees of fecundity in different species of Fishes.

Fishes are capable of feeling attachment for each other. The pleasing writer just cited, “once caught a female Pike during the spawning season, and nothing could drive the male away from the spot at which the female had disappeared, whom