3IO 



THE GREAT BARRIER REEF. 



Hon. John Douglas, the Government resident at Thursday Island, it is, as a new species, here- 

 with associated with the distinctive title of Gobiiis Doitglasi. Additional specimens of the same 

 variety were subsequently obtained, at several more southern stations in the Barrier system. 



The lowermost illustration, Fig. 15, of Chromo Plate XVI., represents a species of pipe-fish, 

 Gastrotokeiis biaculeatus, Bl., that is tolerably plentiful in Torres Strait and some distance further 

 south. It belongs to the same family group, the Syngnathidae, that includes the quaint sea- 

 horse, Hippocampus, and yet more remarkable dragon-fish, Phyllopteryx. It differs from the 

 ordinary pipe-fishes of the genera Syngnathus and Siphonostoma represented in European waters, 

 while it agrees with the allied Nerophis, therein met with, in the fact that the male fish — which 

 discharges the greater share of the customary maternal functions throughout the family — has 

 not a special abdominal or caudal pouch, for the reception and nurture of the eggs and embryonic 

 young, these being merely adherent to depressions in the under surface of the body wall. 

 The specimen here delineated represents such a male fish, fully freighted with his embryonic 

 brood. From the fancied likeness of the contour of the head of this species to that of an 

 alligator, it is popularly named the Alligator Pipe-fish. 



" MERM.\IDS " — FEMALE DUGONG.S NURSING THKIR YOUNG. (aFTKR EMERSON TENNANT ) 



