Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/846

826 scorn and ridicule of our great novelist, he can boast of almost as many aliases as the French counts and other sporting gentlemen who periodically return to journalistic fame under the ever-green beading of "The Great Turf Frauds." Besides his recognized literary English name of Stickleback, with its vulgar London variant Tittlebat, he is also diversely known to the ingenuous youth of this kingdom as the Banestickle, the Jack Bannel, the Harry Banning, the Sharpling, the Ban tide, the Tanticle, the Hackle, the Sharpnails, the Stanstickle, the Tommy Parsy, the Prickleback, the Barmy, and the Tinker; all names implying at once a certain amount of affectionate regard on the part of his sponsors not uncombined with a due respect (the child of experience) for his remarkable offensive and defensive powers. A true theory of tittlebats would have to account not only for the peculiarities of bony structure which have secured the stickleback these his many names, but also for the oddities of domestic arrangement which I shall further unfold in the course of this article.

The common English stickleback, with whom I propose here chiefly to deal, is a fresh-water fish, much discovered in ponds and small rivers, and abundant everywhere in the neighborhood of London. Many famous anglers, as Frank Buckland used to observe, were first "entered" for the noble sport by fishing for stickleback in the Regent's Canal. The fishing is most frequently pursued in the following fashion: You take a stick with a piece of thread tied to it, and a short bit of worm fastened to the string by the middle without any hook or even a bent pin to represent one. When the stickleback, who is naturally a greedy feeder, approaches the worm, he quickly swallows it, and you pull him up with a jerk before he has had time effectually to disgorge his gulped-down mouthful. Expert anglers at this particular task have even been known to jerk up two sticklebacks at a time, each intent upon one end of the worm; but this is a fine point of science not to be imitated by the uninstructed tyro. The fish, when landed, are consigned to pickle-bottles filled with water, and are commonly sold to the proprietors of domestic aquariums for the small charge of a penny a dozen. In this way, a working acquaintance with the habits and manners and peculiarities of the stickleback has been generally diffused throughout a large portion of the unscientific British population.

Nevertheless, I hold it is afatal error to suppose that the theory of tittlebats falls in any way below the dignity of a profound philosopher. On the contrary, there are points in the psychology and physiology of the common stickleback which merit the close and undivided attention of the most accomplished naturalist.