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Though the pipefish and hippocampi had been very closely and 

 carefully watched, the transference of the ova from the female to 

 the pouch of the male, in which they were hatched, had not been at 

 present observed. He knew it was Mr. H. Lee's opinion that this 

 transfei'ence probably took place at night, because, though on several 

 occasions a gravid female had been closely watched, the transference 

 had taken place before the morning. A cm-ious mistake made by 

 Tarrell and others, repeated even in the first edition of the " Guide 

 to the Brighton Aquarium," had been corrected in the third edition 

 — viz., that the young fish, after leaving the pouch of the parent, 

 repaired to it for safety on the approach of danger. He had also 

 heard and read that if the young wei'e shaken out of the pouch of 

 the father and he were held in the water, they would swim back to 

 the pouch. When once the young had left the pouch, they never 

 returned to it; they swam to the surface, and (for he had watched 

 them for hours) neither were able nor desired, apparently, to obtain 

 the supposed protection within the body of their male parent; nay, 

 up to the time of their exti'usion, they were as tightly packed 

 together as hei-riugs in a barrel. These stories respecting their 

 supposed habits were among the fables of fish lore handed down 

 down from one book-maker to another, and which observation of 

 the habits of the fish while in captivity alone could have refuted. 



At one time the larval stages of the crab, lobster, and cray- 

 fish wore thought to be separate and distinct forms of life, and were 

 known by distinctive names. It had though, for some time, been 

 known that two of the supposed distinct forms were merely the 

 young of the crab and lobster, but only within the last few years 

 was it proved, he believed by M. Coste, that what had been called 

 pliyllosoma, or glass crabs, were but the larvel state of the sea cray- 

 fish Poelinums vulgaris. These facts had been confirmed again and 

 again, for at times the tanks in the Brighton Aquarium containing 

 crabs, lobsters, or ci-ayfish had been seen literally swarming with 

 young crabs, lobstei's, and crayfish respectively. Some members of 

 this society would call to mind the circumstances that, at one of their 

 microscopical evenings, Mr. H. Lee showed that Bell was right in 

 asserting that the tail of the young lobster was spatulate, by ex- 

 hibiting young lobsters with spatulate tails alive under the mici'o- 

 scope, a fact respecting which Mr. J. K. Lord expressed his doubts 

 some time ago in the pages of Science Gossiiy. 



