STRICTLY INCOG. 51 



suggests to the most microscopic observer its animal nature. 

 Taken as a whole, nobody could at first sight distinguish 

 it in any way from the waving weed among which it 

 vegetates. 



Clearly, this curious Australian cousin of the Mediter- 

 ranean sea-horses has acquired so marvellous a resemblance 

 to a bit of fucus in order to deceive the eyes of its ever- 

 watchful enemies, and to become indistinguishable from 

 the uneatable weed whose colour and form it so surprisingly 

 imitates. Protective resemblances of the sort are extremely 

 common among the pipe-fish family, and the reason why 

 they should be so is no doubt sufficiently obvious at first 

 sight to any reflecting mind such, for example, as the 

 intelligent reader's. Pipe-fish, as everybody knows, are far 

 from giddy. They do not swim in the vortex of piscine 

 dissipation. Being mostly small and defenceless creatures, 

 lurking among the marine vegetation of the shoals and reefs, 

 they are usually accustomed to cling for support by their 

 snake-like tails to the stalks or leaves of those submerged 

 forests. The omniscient schoolboy must often have watched 

 in aquariums the habits and manners of the common sea- 

 horses, twisted together by their long thin bodies into one 

 inextricable mass of living matwork, or anchored firmly 

 with a treble serpentine coil to some projecting branch of 

 coralline or of quivering sea-wrack. Bad swimmers by 

 nature, utterly unarmed, and wholly undefended by protec- 

 tive mail, the pipe-fish generally can neither fight nor run 

 away: and therefore they depend entirely for their lives 

 upon their peculiar skulking and lurking habits. Their one 

 mode of defence is not to show themselves ; discretion is 

 the better part of their valour; they hide as much as 

 possible among the thickest seaweed, and trust to Provi- 

 dence to escape observation. 



Now, with any animals thus constituted, cowards by 



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