SPINOUS PIPE-FISHES. 197 



crustaceous animals ; and in reference to the tubu- 

 lar mouth, it is probable that by dilating the 

 throat, these fishes can draw their food up their 

 cylindrical beak, as water is drawn up the pipe of 

 a syringe. The beak-like mouth is also well 

 adapted for detaching minute animals from among 

 the various sorts of sea-weed. The flesh of the 

 Trumpet-fish is considered good." 



The natural history of Fishes is very meagre, 

 as compared with the other branches of Zoology. 

 We have exceedingly few of those details of 

 manners, those narratives of instinctive actions, 

 those accounts of curious contrivances and strata- 

 gems by wdiich the great purposes of animal life 

 are fulfilled, those delightful anecdotes of in- 

 dividual biography, — that throw such a charm 

 over the history of other Classes of Vertebrate 

 animals. Yet we doubt not that there exist abun- 

 dant materials for such narratives, could we 

 but get at them ; the observations very recently 

 published on the nest-making habits of certain 

 fishes, long familiar to us, but hitherto unsus- 

 pected of any such instincts, intimate to us that 

 this Class of living beings is not destitute of 

 those endowments which so beautifully illus- 

 trate the inexhaustible resources of wisdom and 

 beneficent power that belong to God, and which 

 are seen in endless variety in those creatures 

 which are patent to our observations. A great, 

 and we fear insuperable, difficulty which the 

 naturalist meets with in prosecuting his investi- 

 gations into the manners and economy of Fishes, 

 is the nature of the element in which they live. 

 Even the common species of our rivers and ponds 



