44-8 SYNGNATHID.E. 



that became known to me appeared in an octavo volume by 

 M. C. U. Ekstrom, on the Fishes of Morko, in Sudermann- 

 land, a province in Sweden, published at Berlin in 1835, a 

 copy of which came into my possession in the autumn of 

 1836. In 1838, a figure of the head of this fish appeared 

 with others in M. Wiegmann's Archives of Natural History 

 in illustration of a paper on the Swedish species of the genus 

 Syngnathus by M. B. Fr. Fries of Stockholm ; and this 

 fish having been obtained on the British coast by others as 

 well as by myself, I now insert a figure of it, of the natural 

 size. 



To this last division belongs the true S. ophidian of Artedi 

 and Linnoeus, the males of which in the season of reproduc- 

 tion carry the eggs, after deposition by the female, in three 

 or four rows of hemispheric depressions on the under surface 

 of their bodies. This species, which lives among the sea- 

 weed on our coast, is more rare than some others. It was 

 found in Cornwall long ago by our countryman and naturalist 

 John Ray, has been recently described by Mr. Jenyns in his 

 " Manual of British Vertebrate Animals, 1 " from specimens 

 obtained at Weymouth, and I also possess several specimens 

 obtained on the Dorsetshire coast. 



This little Pipe-fish is long, slender, and nearly cylindrical, 

 but slightly compressed from the head to the anal aperture ; 

 from thence to the end of the tail round and tapering very 

 gradually to a fine point ; the head is short, the length of it 

 only half an inch in a specimen of nine inches ; the length of 

 the head therefore, as compared to the whole length of the 

 fish, is as one to eighteen ; the nose is straight, rather com- 

 pressed, a section forming a hexagon slightly elongated, of 

 which the upper and under angles are the most produced ; 

 the distance from the point of the nose to the eye, and from 

 thence to the hinder edge of the operculum, equal ; no 

 pectoral, anal, or caudal fin ; the anal aperture is near the 



