NO. 1431. BREEDING HABITS AND EGG OF PIPEFISH— GUDGER. 449 



limits. Again (1878), he finds that S. spicifer, lchthyocam]mf< carce, 

 and three species of I)or(/lchthi/.s go up the rivers of India. Duncker 

 (1!>04) reports Do/'t/icht/tt/s hoaja and JJuinatiUs in the rivers of the 

 Mahij^an Peninsuhi. Such are some of many records. 



In the har))or at Beaufort, in quiet shallow waters where there are 

 muddy bottoms, forests of Zoi^tera abound and in them the pipefishes 

 live. By fishing in these with a fine-meshed seine, they may be caught 

 in considerable numbers. 



It may be well to note that the color of these fishes changes with 

 the seaweeds among which they may be found. S. florldw among 

 tufts of muddy eelgrass is dark green, but put into aquaria with 

 Codlum. or Ulva it becomes bright green. S. fuscuvt is ordinarily 

 of a muddy brown color, but several specimens caught in a tide pool 

 filled with red seaweed were brick red in color, and from this were 

 thought to be a new species. 



THE LITERATURE ON THE REPRODUCTION OF THE 

 LOPHOBRANCHS. 



The history of the progress of our knowledge of the sexual charac- 

 ters, breeding habits, and embryonic structures of the Lophobranchs 

 has never been fully written. Dumeril, in his Histoire Naturelle des 

 Poissons, published in 1870, and iSmitt, in his revision in 1895 of 

 A History of Scandinavian Fishes, give imperfect accounts. In the 

 course of my work on Slphostoma Jioi'hlce^ I have read all the papers 

 to which I have found reference, and it seems of interest and value to 

 put the facts into systematic order. It is a pleasure to acknowledge 

 my indebtedness to Dr. Theodore (xill, of the Smithsonian Institution, 

 who has generously given me of his time and assistance. It is safe to 

 say that had I not had the benefit of his encyclopgedic knowledge of 

 fish literature this chapter would never have been written. I wish 

 also to thank Dr. M. L. Raney, assistant librarian Johns Hopkins 

 University, for his kindness in procuring for me the large amount of 

 literature not found in our li])rary. 



For our earliest knowledge of the pipefish, the Belone of the Greeks 

 and the Acus of the Romans, we must go back to Aristotle, in the 

 third century B. C. Aristotle's observations were singularly accurate 

 when one considers the erroneous opinions held by scientists as late 

 as 1830. In Book VI, chapter 12, he says: "That fish which is called 

 Belone.1 at the season of reproduction, bursts asunder, and in this way 

 the ova escape; for this fish has a division beneatii the stomach and 

 bowels like the serpents called typhlina?. W|ieu it has produced its 

 ova it survives and the wound heals up again." Again, in Book VI, 

 chapter 16: " The Bdonc is late in producing its young and many of 

 them are burst by their ova in the act of parturition, for these ova are 



