Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/175

134 not deserving of. For, though it is so abundant in every shallow pool that idle little boys, on Saturday half-holidays, make it the constant object of their sporting excursions, as their metropolitan cousins resort to the suburban canals to catch Tittle-bats,—the Tansy is worth putting into an Aquarium. Some specimens are ugly enough, it is true, both in form and colour; but others are quite attractive: they vary much from an uniform blackish olive, to a mixture of bright colours, as green, white and yellow; and the eyes are almost always beautifully brilliant, the large iris being of a vivid scarlet. It is an amusing fish in captivity, displaying a mixture of impudence and timidity, coming out fiercely to snatch a morsel of food from before a fellow fish's mouth, and then darting charily under the shadow of a rock to eat its treacherously gotten booty.

What makes this fish more than usually interesting, is, that it is one of those species which construct an elaborate nest for the deposition of their eggs and the hatching of their young:—

I have not had the good fortune to meet with the structure myself, and shall therefore refer my readers to the details mentioned by Mr,. [sic] Couch in his "Illustrations of Instinct" (p. 252 et seq.), where the construction of the little dwelling of fragments of coralline and other sea-weeds, interwoven by silken threads, its suspension from an overhanging rock, the deposition therein of the amber-coloured eggs, the habits