A MOTHERLY KNIGHT IN ARMOR 



flicker — and I knew that an egg had been sucked 

 with amazing speed from a distance into the tube 

 mouth but my senses were too dull, my rods and 

 cones too human-slow to register such bullet speed. 

 Then the reason for it flashed upon me and I saw 

 how, even in its pursuit and capture of living prey, 

 the seahorse still plays the role of a vegetable. The 

 cheek of this fish is formed of one large bone, the 

 opercle, and is fastened by strong muscles directly 

 over the gill-openings. There are no clogging gill- 

 rakers or teeth or tongue, so that a sudden lifting 

 of this great pair of valves induces a mighty flux of 

 water, sufficient to drag with it at lightning speed 

 any living creature in the path of the waterspout. 



I have never seen the courtship of seahorses, but 

 it is described as most amusing, the marine stallion 

 shaking his head and moving swiftly around the 

 female. I was about to pen some light, casual phrase 

 about all that was lacking was to have him paw the 

 water and neigh, when I came across an account, 

 which, as so often happens, made considerable sense 

 out of a meaningless joke. For it is recorded that 

 by cunning movements of the lower jaw the little 

 fish can produce a loud snapping which increases in 

 volume and frequency as the season of courtship 

 approaches. They have even been known to call and 

 answer one another when confined in separate 

 aquariums. 



We might reasonably suppose that now we had 

 exhausted the little bag of life tricks of a seahorse : 

 Remains only to record that the eggs are deposited 



231 



