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MRAP Directory 01
Page 03
Almost never do we find a device in nature which occurs once only. The unique hardly exists: nature is a great copyist. At least two animals of wholly unlike kinds are all but sure to hit independently upon the self-same mechanism. So it is not surprising to learn that a cat-fish has invented an exactly similar mode of carrying its young to that adopted by the Surinam toad: only, here it is on the under surface, not the upper one, that the spawn is plastered. The eggs of this cat-fish, whose scientific name is Aspredo, are pressed into the skin below the body, and so borne about by the mother till they hatch. This is the second instance of which I spoke above, where the female fish herself assumes the care of her offspring, instead of leaving it entirely to her excellent partner.
Which of us cannot look back in youth to the mysteries of the stickleback fisheries? Captains courageous, we sailed forth with bent pin and piece of thread, to woo the wily quarry with half an inch of chopped earthworm. For stickleback abound in every running stream and pond in England. They are beautiful little creatures, too, when you come to examine them, great favorites in the fresh-water aquarium; the male in particular is exquisitely colored, his hues growing brighter and his sheen more conspicuous at the pairing season. There are many species of sticklebacks--in England we have three very different kinds--but all are alike in one point which gives them their common name, that is to say, in their aggressive and protective prickliness. They are armed against all comers. The dorsal fin is partly replaced in the whole family by strong spines or "stickles," which differ in number in the different species. One of our English sorts is a lover of salt water: he lives in the sea, especially off the Cornish coast, and has fifteen stickles or spines; on which account he is commonly known as the Fifteen-spined Stickleback; our other two sorts belong to fresher waters, and are known as the Ten-spined and the Three-spined respectively.
Philip was at this time engaged in the siege of Athens, which had joined Attalus and the Rhodians. The Consul Galba crossed over to Epirus, and Athens was relieved by a Roman fleet; but before he withdrew, Philip, prompted by anger and revenge, displayed his barbarism by destroying the gardens and buildings in the suburbs, including the Lyecum and the tombs of the Attic heroes; and in a second incursion which he made with large re-enforcements he committed still greater excesses. For some time, however, the war lingered on without any decided success on either side. The Consul Villius, who succeeded Galba in B.C. 199, effected nothing of importance, and it was not till the appointment of the Consul T. Quinctius Flamininus to the command that the war was earned on with energy and vigor (B.C. 198).
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