NO. mi. BREEDING HABITUS AND EGG OF PIPEFISH— GUDGER. 451 



onl}" females with eggs, doubts if there are any males. In short, he 

 seems to think that the fishes are hermaphrodite. 



The works of Willoiighby (1786) and Cavolini (1787) are not at hand, 

 but references to them indicate that they added nothing of value to the 

 discoveries of Rondelet. 



The first real discovery since the time of Rondelet was made by John 

 Walcott, who in 1784-8-5 described the ''false belly"" found under the 

 tail of the egg-bearing fi.sh as being always and only on the male fish. 

 His words deserve quotation. "The male differs from the female in 

 the belly from the vent to the tail tin being nuich broader and in hav- 

 ing, for about two-thirds of its length, two soft flaps which fold 

 together and form'a false belly. They ])reed in summer, the females 

 casting their roe into the false ))elly of the male. This 1 can assert 

 from having examined many and having constantly found only in the 

 sununer roe in those without a false belly, but never in those with one, 

 and on opening them later in the summer, there has been no roe in 

 those which I have termed female, but only in the false belly of the 

 male." This discovery was buried in AValcott's maiuiscript History of 

 British Fishes until it was found by Yarrell and made known in his 

 work of the same title published in 1830. 



Pallas, in 183 J, speculates as to whether the mothers recover from 

 the rupture of the belly in parturition, and, finding only females in 

 the Baltic Sea, is confirmed in his idea that the fishes are hermaphrodite. 



In this same year the Swedish naturalist, Eckstroem, writing from 

 information obtained at first hand, at Skargiird, on Synguathus acus^ 

 started a controversy which lasted forty 3^ears. He declares that the 

 male only possesses the pouch and bears the eggs, that a regular copu- 

 lation takes place which must be repeated several times, that the pouch 

 becomes filled with a clear white mucus in which the eggs are imbed- 

 ded and on which the embryos will later be nourished. He writes 

 that in fall and winter the covers of the pouch are depressed and its 

 mucous contents very greatly diminished. He finds that many eggs 

 are lost in transfer, that the females are generally larger than the 

 males, and in number about ten to one of the latter. He concludes 

 that fertilization takes place in the pouch. The work of the writer 

 on the pipefishes of Beaufort confirms Eckstroem in all respects save 

 that the dirterence in relative numbers of the two sexes is not so great. 



Eckstroem explicitly describes how a male S. acus, which he had 

 put into a small pool of water, bent its body so that the tail described 

 a curve with the bow downward. This caused the lips of the pouch 

 to open and the young came out and swam about in the water. On 

 being disturbed, the father bent the body as before and the young 

 crept back into the marsupium. This was repeated several times. 

 One is loth to think that so excellent an observer as Eckstroem is in 

 error, but no one has ever seen this phenomenon since. Later writers 



