PIPE-FISHES. 209 



objects in the water is manifested quite as strongly by 

 this more slender and more flexible species, which does 

 not possess any trace of a fin. at the tail-tip. This 

 prehensile organ is in a moment whipped round the 

 stem of any sea-weed or similar object with which it 

 comes into contact ; and thus moored, the pretty Pipe 

 throws its little body into all sorts of elegant contor- 

 tions, hanging freely down, or elevating itself almost 

 perpendicularly, at pleasure. 1 



The fins in this genus of fishes are very small and 

 feeble. Some of them have a pair of excessively minute 

 pectorals, an almost invisible anal, and a tiny fan for a 

 caudal. All have a short delicate dorsal, and several 

 have no other fin than this, of which section the Worm 

 Pipe is an example. Yet, according to the Swedish 

 naturalist, Fries, the young of this species possess at 

 their birth both caudal and pectorals, the former ex- 

 tending far up on the body, both on the dorsal and 

 ventral edges. All these are in after life absorbed 



1 In a paper read before the Zoological Society on June llth, 1861, Dr. 

 J. E. Gray describes as new to naturalists these and other habits of the 

 Pipe-fishes, which he had observed when watching specimens kept in the 

 tanks of the gardens in Regent Park. And he takes occasion to lecture 

 other " persons who have leisure and opportimity" for not giving more 

 particulars of the manners of fishes. But the habits in question had been 

 described in minute detail by myself nine years before (see my Devonshire 

 Coast, p. 180, et seq.), together with many other interesting points in the 

 economy of these curious fishes. The still earlier observations of Mr. 

 Couch are also thus cavalierly ignored. 



