DOUBLY SPOTTED SUCKER. 199 



motion. While quiet, and attached by its sucker to the cup, 

 the tail was usually thrown forward either to the right or left, 

 and so bent that its fin reached to the gills, in the manner of 

 Montagu's Sucker, and in this posture it was able to move 

 forward, as if by the action of the ventral fins. The grains of 

 spawn were of large size in May; and on this portion of its 

 history, Mr. Thompson, in his "Natural History of Ireland," 

 vol. iv, afibrds us some further information. He says, "Mr. 

 Hyndman, when dredging (the 20th. of June,) off St. John's 

 Point, County of Down, brought up from the depth of fifteen 

 fathoms, a perfect and full-grown specimen of the bivalve shell 

 Venus Virginea, in which were a Lcpadogaster bimaculatus, 

 with its ova and young, some only of which had made their 

 appearance; and the same gentleman at the end of August, in 

 the same year, dredged in Belfast bay a single full-grown valve 

 of Pectunculus pilosus, the hollow of which was closely studded 

 over for the space of a square inch with the ova of this species, 

 each ovum touching or close to the next one. These ova are 

 deposited singly over the surface of the shell on which every 

 one rests; each ovum globular, about one sixteenth of an inch 

 in diameter, which is remarkably large for a species which I 

 have not known to exceed two inches in length. I had fre- 

 quently seen this species when brought up in the dredge within 

 old single valves of bivalve shells, but until the instance just 

 mentioned occurred I was not aware of the cause of its par- 

 tiality for them." Mr. Thompson, of Weymouth, has observed 

 the same thing in the upper valve of an oyster shell, and says 

 the fish remains near its spawn until it is hatched. 



This fish reaches the length of about two inches, and in 

 many particulars bears a not distant likeness to the more common 

 Cornish Sucker, although a decided difierence will be seen 

 between them when examples of each are laid together. Thus 

 in the present species the cheeks are not so full, and the 

 snout is shorter and sharper. The colour is always very 

 different, being of a light reddish orange, without those spots 

 which are behind the eyes in the Cornish Sucker, and which 

 are always present, even in small examples of that species. 

 The tail in each is more or less round; but the most remarkable 

 and decisive distinction between them is in the situation and 

 extent of the dorsal and anal fins, which are short in themselves. 



