Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/849

Rh And now, I think, we are beginning to get a little nearer toward the theory of tittlebats. For the male stickleback is a prodigious warrior, and, when he meets a rival of his own kind, he engages with him at once in deadly warfare. Their battles, says Mr. Darwin, are at times desperate, for these puny combatants fasten tight on each other for several seconds, tumbling over and over again, until their strength appears utterly exhausted. Bold and pugnacious as they are, however, it is only my lords who thus fiercely contend with one another; their demure little mates remain always perfectly pacific, gentle, and even-tempered. With the rough-tailed stickleback, the males while fighting swim round and round one another, biting and endeavoring to pierce each other's mailed skin with their raised lateral spines or lances. Small as they are, their bite is very severe, and inflicts a deadly wound upon their antagonist; and Mr. Noel Humphreys remarks that they use their lateral spines with fierce effect, so that he has seen one brave stickleback during a stout battle rip up his opponent from end to end, till the vanquished hero sank to the bottom and died ingloriously.

It is during the moment of battle, and just before and after it, that the colors of all fighting animals become invariably most intense. The reason is plain: battle is joined during the mating-season, and "before the face of maidens and of dames"; and, as in human tournaments, the ladies stand by to applaud the conquerors and to reward their prowess. They are themselves the prize of the encounter they stimulate. Besides, the highest physical vigor and the highest excitement bring out the greatest beauty both of men and animals. The angrier you make a mandrill, the more vividly tinted are his cheeks and callosities. The frilled lizards and flying-dragons glow with all the brightest colors of the rainbow when you tease or annoy them. The turkey-cock swells his crimson wattles and spreads his ruffled feathers to the utmost at sight of a rival or a mischievous boy. There is a little hot-tempered fish known as Betta pugnax, and kept as a sort of domestic pet by the Siamese (much as the Christian English gentleman of forty or fifty years since kept fighting-cocks) to display its prowess for the edification of the Mongolian intelligence. "When in a state of quiet," says Cantor, "its dull colors present nothing remarkable; but if two be brought together, or if one sees its own image in a looking-glass, the little creature becomes suddenly excited, the raised fins and the whole body shine with metallic colors of dazzling beauty, while the projected gill-membrane, waving like a black frill round the throat, adds something of grotesqueness to the general appearance. In this state, it makes repeated darts at its real or reflected antagonist. But both, when taken out of each other's sight, instantly become quiet." The fighting-fishes, as the Siamese call them, are kept in globes like gold-fish, and fed from time to time with the larvæ of mosquitoes. The Siamese are as wild after their combats as the Malays are for