FISHES PHENOMENAL AND ECONOMICAL. 



In Gastrotokeus biaculeatus, an elongate, grass-green species, a yet nearer 

 approach is made to the ordinary Pipe-fishes. The tail, however, possesses the same 

 prehensile character as that of the Sea-horses. Gastrotokeus is an essentially tropical 

 type, occurring on the North Queensland coast and on the north-west coast of 

 Western Australia. In common with Phyllopteryx and Solengognathus, the male 

 individual of Gastrotokeus fulfils the r6le of foster parent to the infant brood, 

 receiving and taking care of the ova, which throughout the period of incubation are 

 firmly embedded by their bases in the soft abdominal membranes, until they are 

 hatched. The ova of both Phyllopteryx and Gastrotokeus are of large size, of a 

 delicate pale pink hue in the latter and a bright clear red in the first-named type. 

 In many of the ordinary Pipe-fishes the eggs, carried by the male, are enclosed in 

 membranous folds of the skin, while in the Sea-horses, Hippocampus, there is a true 

 pouch or marsupium for their reception. As may be anticipated by the small aperture 

 of the mouth in all of the members of this group here enumerated, their food is of 

 the most minute description, consisting almost exclusively of Entomostracous Crustacea 

 and the larval forms of the larger species. 



Some of the most outr^-shaped and brilliantly coloured members of the 

 Australian fish fauna are included in the very distinct group of the Plectognathi. 

 This series is represented most conspicuously by what are known popularly in 

 Australia as Leather Jackets and Cow-fishes, belonging respectively to the genera 

 Monacanthus and Ostracion. Although the Plectognathi are usually represented 

 as fish which are essentially characteristic of tropical or sub-tropical seas, the 

 greater number and more brilliant of the Australian species pertain to the tempe- 

 rate waters of that Island- Continent, and are notably abundant on the extreme 

 southern sea-board of Tasmania. As with the Syngnathidse, a coloured plate, Chromo- 

 Plate VII., has been set specially apart for the illustration of characteristic members 

 of this group. 



Of the Australian Cow-fishes, so-called with reference to the horn-like 

 prominences which are usually developed from the frontal region of their indurated 

 carapace-like integument, the Tasmanian species Ostracion or Aracana ornata is a 

 brilliant example. The males and females of this species are so differently coloured 

 that they were originally, as in the case of the British Cuckoo Wrass, Labrus mixtus. 

 supposed to represent two distinct species, and had conferred upon them the separate 

 titles of Ostracion ornata and 0. aurita. The specific identity of the two species has 

 been amply demonstrated in examples examined by the writer, one particularly interesting 



