Some few fish, indeed, are truly viviparous; among them certain blennies and carps, in which the eggs hatch out entirely within the body of the mother. One of the most interesting of these divergent types is the common Californian and Mexican silver-fish, an inhabitant of the bays and inlets of sub-tropical America. Its chief peculiarity and title to fame lies in the extreme bigness of its young at birth. The full-grown fish runs to about ten inches in length, fisherman's scale, while the fry measure as much as three inches apiece; so that they lie, as Professor Seeley somewhat forcibly expresses it, 'packed in the body of the parent as close as herrings in a barrel.' This strange habit of retaining the eggs till after they have hatched out is not peculiar to fish among egg-laying animals, for the common little brown English lizard is similarly viviparous, though most of its relatives elsewhere deposit their eggs to be hatched by the heat of the sun in earth or sandbanks. Mr. Hannibal Chollop, if I recollect aright, once shot an imprudent stranger for remarking in print that the ancient Athenians, that inferior race, had got ahead in their time of the modern Loco-foco ticket. But several kinds of fish have undoubtedly got ahead in this respect of the common reptilian ticket; for instead of leaving about their eggs anywhere on the loose to take care of themselves, they build a regular nest, like birds, and sit upon their eggs till the fry emerge from them. All the sticklebacks, for instance, are confirmed nest-builders: but here once more it is the male, not the female, who weaves the materials together and takes care of the eggs during their period of incubation. The receptacle itself is made of fibres of water-weeds or stalks of grass, and is open at both ends to let a current pass through. As soon as the lordly little polygamist has built it, he coaxes and allures his chosen mates into the entrance, one by one, to lay their eggs; and then when the nest is full, he mounts guard over them bravely, fanning them with his fins, and so keeping up a continual supply of oxygen which is necessary for the proper development of the embryo within. It takes a month's sitting before the young hatch out, and even after they appear, this excellent father (little Turk though he be, and savage warrior for the stocking of his harem) goes out attended by all his brood whenever he sallies forth for a morning constitutional in search of caddis-worms, which shows that there may be more good than we imagine, after all, in the domestic institutions even of people who don't agree with us.