Still, good mothers too may be found among fish, though far from frequently. One of the Guiana catfishes, known as Aspredo, very much resembles her countrywoman the Surinam toad in her nursery arrangements. Of course you know the Surinam toad--whom not to know argues yourself unknown--that curious creature that carries her eggs in little pits on her back, where the young hatch out and pass through their tadpole stage in a slimy fluid, emerging at last from the cells of this living honeycomb only when they have attained the full amphibian honours of four-legged maturity. Well, Aspredo among cat-fish manages her brood in much the same fashion; only she carries her eggs beneath her body instead of on her back like her amphibious rival. When spawning time approaches, and Aspredo's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, the lower side of her trunk begins to assume, by anticipation, a soft and spongy texture, honeycombed with pits, between which are arranged little spiky protuberances. After laying her eggs, the mother lies flat upon them on the river bottom, and presses them into the spongy skin, where they remain safely attached until they hatch out and begin to manage for themselves in life. It is curious that the only two creatures on earth which have hit out independently this original mode of providing for their offspring should both be citizens of Guiana, where the rivers and marshes must probably harbour some special danger to be thus avoided, not found in equal intensity in other fresh waters. A prettily marked fish of the Indian Ocean, allied, though not very closely, to the pipe fishes, has also the distinction of handing over the young to the care of the mother instead of the father. Its name is Solenostoma (I regret that no more popular title exists), and it has a pouch, formed in this case by a pair of long broad fins, within which the eggs are attached by interlacing threads that push out from the body. Probably in this instance nutriment is actually provided through these threads for the use of the embryo, in which case we must regard the mechanism as very closely analogous indeed to that which obtains among mammals.