

ttt?CU ' jc>o.^iv£i5cJji 



tanks of my laboratory I have found that neither 

 the half-grown individuals which I captured nor 

 the minute young which were born therein had in- 

 creased in size enough to warrant the belief that 

 they would finish their growth in a decade — and 

 this in spite of the fact that they were well fed and 

 were observed continually to eat. Thus but one 

 inference is left. And a guess that the sea-horse 

 lives to be even more than a hundred years old, is 

 about as good as any other, if not the best of all. 



Ill 



This lifeless animal on my bench is a male. It is 

 the selfsame creature which I procured with its 

 pouch laden with young, already mentioned as 

 being among the number taken in the trawl. 



As usual in fishes, the male hippocampid is 

 smaller than the female. His sex is easily distin- 

 guished at sight by the presence of the brood- 

 pouch occupying the forefront of his body in the 

 region between the belly and the tail. This sac-like 

 structure in my male, now emptied of its living 

 load, is flat and compressed against the body, look- 

 ing somewhat like a leathery shield; but when I 

 first obtained the animal, the pouch was distended 



[285] 



