i 7 4 WOLF-HUNTING. 



inches in length, moved in strange and graceful fashion, apparently 

 hunting for water insects, invisible to the naked eye, in their 

 narrow pellucid home. Sometimes they seemed to stand literally 

 on their heads, the dorsal fin moving with singular rapidity ; then, 

 reversing that position, to balance themselves on their tails per- 

 pendicularly, with " heads up and sterns down," but, unlike the 

 beauties described by my quotation, at such time the pace was 

 nil, and, barring the dorsal fin, they were all but motionless. 



But the most extraordinary feature distinguishing these Syng- 

 nathi consists in their being didelphyc or marsupial ; the male 

 fish being furnished with a false belly or elongated pouch between 

 the stomach and the tail, into which the female casts her roe. 

 In this receptacle the young are fecundated ; and to it they 

 retreat when threatened by danger, just as the young of the 

 opossum and kangaroo do under like circumstances. There is 

 a plate in the work of the old French naturalist Rondelet, 

 entitled " De Piscibus Marinis" in which the young of the 

 pipe-fish are represented as swimming in and out of the male 

 parent's pouch (the female not being so provided), and playing 

 around it, as a litter of puppies do around their dam. 



The evolutions performed by these fish, on receiving their 

 food, resembled those of a tumbler exhibiting some wondrous 

 feat of gyration. They twisted round on their backs, and then 

 through their curiously-formed syringe-like beak they sucked in 

 the food an evolution rendered necessary by the mouth being 

 under the beak and perpendicular to its axis. M. Coste's interest 

 in the peculiarities of these fish never seemed to grow weary. 

 He had watched them, he told us, for hours together, and scarcely 

 a day passed without his noticing some new trait in their habits 

 worthy of record. 



It would be far beyond the scope of this paper to relate a tithe 

 of M. Coste's pleasant remarks on his finny flock ; but I must not 

 omit a few words on the crustaceous tribe, some of which, for 



