A MOTHERLY KNIGHT IN ARMOR 



justments, one of which is a large swim-bladder 

 filled with gas just sufficiently buoyant to hold him 

 in hydrostatic equilibrium. If, through accident, his 

 inner balloon is punctured and the merest pinpoint 

 of a gas bubble escapes, gravity seizes upon him, he 

 sinks helpless to the bottom, there to remain until 

 his wound be mended, or until nemesis comes along 

 on legs or fins. 



Even for the seahorse in perfect health and 

 strength there are waiting scores of hungry mouths 

 armed with great cruel teeth which would crush him 

 like a nut. Against these he builds up the seaweed 

 defense — of haunt, color, pattern, shape, move- 

 ment, and in addition he has even an unpleasant 

 odor — or, to water creatures, taste. His tail fin — 

 most valuable of all for progression — is gone and 

 instead he twines like a tendril. His life is lived at 

 lowest output of energy, a semi-sessile, pseudo- 

 crinoid or sorts, almost, we might think, on the way 

 to the fixation of barnacles. But this is not degen- 

 eration, it is adaptation to a safe environment, and 

 as we go on to study Hippocampus we realize that 

 he need have no envy for the swift herring or the 

 voracious dolphin. 



It would seem that in the matter of food our sea- 

 horse must desert the quiet, patient, elementalness 

 of seaweed and dangerously revert to fish activity. 

 But here again Nature has worked out a most in- 

 genious plan. For such a vegetative existence little 

 nourishment can be needed, yet we have a carnivore 

 which must have food. Resting on a frond of weed 



229 



