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each other or swimming in pairs , at the same time twisting 

 their tails round each other and playing all sorts of pretty 

 tricks. In pairing time (autumn) their motions are very lively, 

 and a couple are often to be seen swimming about and caress- 

 ing each other or hanging in loving companionship on the 

 tube of some marine worm. The manner in which they nurse 

 their progeny is equally curious. As soon as the female lays 

 her eggs they are received by the male, who carries them about 

 with him in a pouch under his tail until the little things are 

 capable of independent existence. When their lively movements 

 begin to irritate the male , he endeavours to rid himself of 

 them , repeatedly bending his tail near the place where the 

 pouch is. At every bend he makes the pouch opens, and a num- 

 ber of the little animals, which look like notes of interrogation, 

 escape and immediately begin to swim about; they are then 

 about half an inch long. 



The sea-horses are of no importance whatever to mankind, 

 and it seems that they have few or no enemies in the sea; at 

 least in the Aquarium, where they are kept together with all 

 kinds of animals, they remain entirely unmolested. Other kinds 

 of Lophobranchii are the Sea-needles (Syngnathus, Nerophis, 

 and Siphonostoma). The last inhabits meadows of seagrass; 

 and in form and colour imitates to perfection the decaying lea- 

 ves (mimicry). 



The true swimming fish to which we will now turn our at- 

 tention, are principally the kinds familiar by their shape even 

 to the non-scientific visitor. They spend the greater part of 

 their lives in swimming or floating, thus proving that they are 

 more or less master of the element in which they live. Yet 

 even some of these are, by habit and the food they eat, bound 

 to the configuration of the coasts, and there have their settled 

 abode; while others rove more freely through the ocean, espe- 

 cially the pelagic fish , and are entirely independent of the 

 shore or the bottom of the sea. 



We will first notice the coast fish and, before all, the Wrasses 

 or Labroidae, a species distinguished for splendour of colour 

 reminding one of the tropics , and deriving their name from 

 their thick protrusive lips. To this species belong the gay 

 Labrus and Crenilabrus, and the smaller Julis; all lively 

 fish that frequent precipitous coasts rich in algae, and are to be 

 recognized by their peculiar way of swimming by starts. Of 

 the first-named and larger kind the pretty Labrus festivus 

 is very interesting from the care which it takes of its young, 



