OCR Text |
Show Fish That Builds a Nest. Few fishes are nest-bullders. The majority of them make their homes wherever chance and the waves land them. There is one member of the finny tribe, however, that exemplifies the protective provisions of nature the marbled angler of the Sargasso sea. Owing to Its peculiar structure It Is a poor swimmer and It. therefore, spends most of Its life moving slowly nbout on the bottom among corals, seaweeds, etc., which these fishes closely resemble in color nnd in outline. They cling, too, to the floating masses of sargassum weed with their peculiar fins, and the color and the marking of the fish closely close-ly resemble the weed Itself. Not only does the weed thus furnish a home for this species, but the fish actually constructs con-structs a nest from It and therein deposits de-posits Its eggs. One of these nests, found In connection connec-tion with the Hassler expedition in 1871, was described as consisting of a round mass of sargassum, nbout the size of two fists rolled up together. To all appearances ap-pearances it was made of nothing but this gulf weed, tho branches and leaves of which were, however, evidently knit together, and not merely tangled Into a roundish mass; for. though some of the leaves and brnnches hung loose from the nest, It became at once visible that the bulk of the ball was held together by threads trending In every direction among the seaweed. By close observation observa-tion It became apparent that this mass of seaweed was a nest, the central part of which was bound up in the form of a ball, with several loose branches extending ex-tending in various directions. On still closer examination the nest above described de-scribed was found to be full of eggs, which were scattered throughout the mass. Nature has thus afforded a safe asylum asy-lum for these somewhat helpless fishes, whose cutaneous filaments, which are plentifully provided on the belly, around the mouth and on the doreal spine, so nearly resemble the weed Itself that predaceus fishes doubtless fall to recognize recog-nize the living animals, and thus the latter escape extermination Chicago Chronicle. |