48 



SYNGNATHID.E. 



that became known to me appeared in an octavo vokime by 

 M. C. U, Ekstrom, on the Fishes of Morko, in Suderraann- 

 land, a province in Sweden, published at Berlin in 1835, a 

 copy of which came into my possession in the autumn of 

 1836. In 1838, a figure of the head of this fish appeared 

 with others in M. Wiegmann's Archives of Natural History 

 in illustration of a paper on the Swedish species of the genus 

 Syngnathus by M. B. Fr. Fries of Stockholm ; and this 

 fish having been obtained on the British coast by others as 

 well as by myself I now insert a figure of it, of the natural 

 size, in the present supplement. 



The British Si/ngnatht\ as suggested by the Rev. L. 

 Jenyns, consist of six species ; two marsupial pipe-fish »S'. acns 

 and S. T;i/phle, having true caudal fins : four ophidial pipe- 

 fish, which may be again divided into two sections, the first 

 of which contains two species, S. aquoreiis and S. anguiiieus,* 

 having each a rudimentary caudal fin ;-|- the second section, 

 also containing two species, S. ophidion and S. lumhrici- 

 J'ormis, in which there is no rudimentary caudal fin, the 

 round tail ending in a fine point. 



To this last division belongs the true S. ophidion of Artedi 

 and Linnseus, the males of which in the season of reproduc- 

 tion carry the eggs, after deposition by the female, in three 

 or four rows of hemispheric depressions on the under surface 

 of their bodies. This species, which lives among the sea- 

 weed on our coast, is more rare than some others. It was 

 fi)und in Cornwall long ago by our countryman and naturalist 

 John Ray, has been recently described by Mr. Jenyns in his 

 " Manual of British Vertebrate Animals," from specimens 

 obtained at Weymouth, and I also possess several specimens 

 obtained on the Dorsetshire coast. 



* A specific name proposed by IVIr. Jenyns for that species which we had 

 previously called, in error, 5. opJiidiou. 



t See British J'ishes, vol. ii. pp. 337 and 339, vignettes. 



