observed by competent naturalists in Cornwall and the Orkneys. This salt-water descendant of the little river tittlebat grows, as might naturally be expected, to a larger size in his more spacious environment, and reaches the dimensions of an average trout. He never ascends rivers, even to spawn, but weaves his nest of sea-weed or corralline under some overhanging ledge, and guards his bright, amber-colored eggs with the same jealous care as his fresh-water relations. His personal appearance is chiefly remarkable for the very elongated form which procures him the name of adder, as well as for the prolonged snout, not unlike a gar-fish, and the rows of shields that protect his side with a perfect coat of sheeny sheet-armor. That admirable observer, Mr. Richard Couch, of Mevagissey, to whom, with Mr. Jonathan Couch, we owe most of our knowledge of marine fish-life, was the first to watch his manner of nesting. He found that the marine stickleback built its home in shallow water, where the bottom was thickly covered with sea-wrack, and that it bound the materials together with an elastic thread, resembling silk, which hardens by exposure to water, but the mode of whose secretion has not yet been determined. Mr. Couch visited one of the nests every day for three weeks, and saw the parent stickleback invariably mounting guard over it with military precision. When he ventured to disturb part of the materials, the fish immediately set about repairing the damage, by drawing together the sides of the opening, so as to conceal once more the eggs which the too curious naturalist had exposed to view. Stickleback will tolerate no eaves-dropping intrusion into the sacred privacy of domestic life. Society journalism is quite unknown among them.
These few remarks complete in outline the theory of tittlebats which I venture tentatively to suggest in substitution for Mr. Pickwick's lost and lamented essay. As its moral may not be immediately apparent to the young, the gay, the giddy, and the thoughtless, I shall not hesitate to append one in the undisguised form borrowed by modern ethical writers from Æsop's fables. If any of my didactic reflections scattered through the text shall have induced only one serious stickleback to abandon polygamy or to renounce cannibalism, I shall feel that this article has not been written in vain.—Cornhill Magazine.
