176 buijLetin of the bureau of fisheries 



chusetts. Its chief home is among eelgrass or seaweeds, not only in salt marshes, 

 harbors, and river mouths, where it often goes up into brackish water, but on more 

 open shores as well. In such locations it is as often caught to-day by boys dipping 

 mummichogs for bait as when Storer wrote of it nearly three-cjuarters of a century 

 ago. The pipefish, like the three-spined stickleback, sometimes strays out to sea 

 on the surface, and while we have never taken it in our tow nets, Kendall (1896, 

 p. 623) has often found it under floating rockweed along the Maine coast. There 

 is no reason to suppose the pipefish is at all migratory, for it is resident in the eel- 

 grass (Zostera) at Woods Hole throughout the year. 



So far as known pipefishes have few enemies. Perhaps they are protected l^y 

 their noxious smell. They usually propel themselves by the dorsal fin, but when 

 alarmed they can travel swiftly with eel-hke strokes of the tail from side to side. 



Food. — The pipefish feeds chiefly on minute Crustacea, copepods especially, 

 which are often the sole contents of their stomachs according to Vinal Edwards' 

 experience; also to some extent on fish ova, on very small fish fry, and for that 

 matter no doubt indiscriminately on any small marine animals. Its snout is so 

 distensible that it can swallow larger prey than one might expect. In capturing 

 its prey it has been described as expelling the water from the snout and pharynx by 

 muscular action, depending on the return rush to sweep its victims into its mouth. 



Breeding habits. — On the southern shores of New England pipefish breed from 

 March to August, and probably through this same period on the shores of the Gulf 

 of Maine. Their breeding habits are so unusual that a whole literature has grown 

 up about them.'^ Since the days of Aristotle it has been known that the pipefish 

 nurses its eggs in the brood pouch (p. 175). It is the male that develops this pouch, 

 the flaps of wluch lie flat against the concave belly out of breeding season, but are 

 swollen and their edges cemented together during sexual activity. At each copu- 

 lation, in wliich the male and female interwine together, the protruding oviduct of 

 the latter is inserted into the opening of the pouch of the former and a dozen or more 

 eggs passed over. A pair of fishes copulate several times in succession — wath in- 

 tervals of rest — until the pouch is filled, the male working the eggs down toward 

 its posterior end by contortions of its body. Fertihzation is supposed to take 

 place during the transference of the eggs from one parent to the other. The eggs 

 become embedded in the lining of the brood pouch, and it has been established for 

 the European pipefish (probably tliis applies equally to our North American species) 

 that the embryo within the egg is nourished by the epithelial lining layer of the 

 pouch, so that the latter functions as a placenta.'^ Incubation occupies about 10 

 days, according to Gudger, and the young are retained in the brood pouch until 

 they are 8 or 9 mm. long, when the yolk sac has been absorbed. The young pipe- 

 fish are then ready for independent existence, and once they leave the pouch they 

 never return to it, as young sea horses (Hippocampus) are said to do (p. 178). Sev- 

 eral observers agree on this — most recently Miss Marie Poland (now Mrs. C. J. 



" For a historical survey and a general account of the breeding of the closely allied Siphostoma floridx see Gudger (Proceed- 

 ings," U. 8. National Museum, Vol. XXIX, 1906, pp. 447-500, Pis. V-XI). 



1' For detailed (if somewhat divergent) accounts of this interesting phenomenon see Huot (Annale^ des Sciences Naturelles. 

 HuitiJme St^rie, Zoologie, SSrie 8, Tome XIV, 1902, pp. 197-2S8. Paris) and Cohn (Anatomischer Anzeigcr, Centralblatt fur 

 die gesamte wissenscbaftliche Anatomic, Band 24, 1904, pp. 192-199, 3 figs. Jena). 



