358 



OCEAN PIPEFISH. 



suddenly fell as it approached the fin, and began again behind 

 it, more rounded, and gradually disappearing along the caudal 

 portion, with a depression or channel along each side of the 

 base of the fin. The ventral ridge was slight, and the only 

 mark of an angle was slight along the side, bending down and 

 ending at the vent; behind this point round, tapering and 

 ending in a small but well-marked fin, with five rays. The 

 colour yellowish brown, dark along the dorsal ridge, belly 

 yellowish; a brownish pink stripe from each side of the upper 

 jaw through the eye to the upper border of the gill-covers. 



I have possessed a male of the acknowledged Ocean Pipefish 

 which in length measured twenty-six inches, and a female but 

 little short of the same dimensions; but there was a remarkable 

 difference in the structure of both of them from that given 

 above. They were more slender, and the female especially so. 

 But the more remarkable difference was in the ridge along 



the back to the dorsal fin, which has, from near the head 

 backward, a membrane almost as broad as the dorsal fin itself, 

 and the line of direction passed on straight to the extremity, 

 without that gap or depression in which the dorsal fin was 

 situated in the first-named example. In the latter also the tail 

 portion ended without a distinctly visible fin, in this respect 

 having some resemblance to the species coming next under our 

 notice, and of which I shall make a comparison with the Ocean 

 Pipefish; but this defect may have been the result of accident. 



