35S GREATER PIPEFISH. 



the vent, of what he believed to be the female, which at the 

 proper season was rent asunder in order to allow the escape 

 of the young; and the consideration of this supposed fact of the 

 disruption and its consequences has produced in Lacepede an 

 expression of poetic sympathy, in which he dwells on the self- 

 sacrifice which this fish has shewn itself thus ready to make 

 for the sake of its offspring. But later observation has rectified 

 much of the error into which the older naturalists had very 

 naturally fallen; and has thus made the proceeding of the 

 production of its young intelligible; while in fact the singularity 

 of the process is rendered even more remarkable than formerly 

 it was supposed to be. 



The species now under consideration, together with the 

 Broad-nosed Pipefish, are in truth what is now known by the 

 term Marsupial animals; but with this difference from the 

 quadrupeds thus designated, that in the present instance, while 

 the first production of the eggs or roe is in the body of the 

 female, (in which sex no caudal pouch exists,) at the time of 

 their being rendered fertile, they are transferred to the male, 

 which only possesses a pouch, and in which they pass through 

 the further stages of their development, until they have become 

 duly qualified for the duties of active life in the sea. Before 

 impregnation the slit which forms the entrance of the pouch is 

 sealed by adhesion, and so it becomes again when the eggs 

 have been received into it, although, as we shall see, this is 

 not usually a single proceeding, once and for all. 



Mr. Jenyns found these fish with enlarged roe when only 

 four inches in length; but our observations are from individuals 

 of mature growth, in which still a portion of the actual pro- 

 ceeding in the transferrence of the grains remains obscure: 

 but it is thus briefly referred to by Mr. Andrews, of Dublin, 

 in the "Zoologist" for 1860, p. 7052:— "In shoal-water or a 

 low tide these fish may sometimes be seen in pairs side by 

 side, apparently stationary on some rocky stone. At this time 

 the ova — the capsules but imperfectly matured — are liberated 

 from the female, and received into the abdominal sac, the male 

 fish having the power of expanding the lappings of the sac, 

 and attaching the ova by a highly viscid or glutinous secretion." 



Rondeletius found ova in the pouch so earl)'' in the year as 



