CHAPTER VI. 



SEA-HORSES AND EELS. 



(HippocampidcB : Anguillidce.) 



N the present chapter it is my intention to briefly notice 

 the typical representatives of two very different and 

 only remotely allied orders of fishes. I refer to the 

 Sea-horses and the eels, forms that have for years 

 excited popular interest, inasmuch as the first-named appear so 

 very unfishlike, and the latter by many are suspected of having 

 some sort of kinship with the snakes. Both are teleostean fishes, 

 however, and according to Jordan, the Sea-horses belong to the 

 order Lophobranchii, and the Eels to the order Apodes. 



Again, sea-horses are contained in the family Hippocampidw, 

 genus Hippocampus, and Jordan gives two species as occurring 

 in our fauna, viz.: H. heptagonus and H. ingens. The other lopho- 

 branch family associated with them are the pipefishes (Syngna- 

 thidce), of which there are a number of forms on our coasts. They 

 are very different appearing as compared with the sea-horses, as 

 they are small, slender, elongated fishes, covered with bony 

 plates. They have long raw-prehensile tails, commonly pro- 

 vided with a diminutive caudal fin. The males have egg-pouches, 

 into w r hich the eggs are received and hatched. After this the 

 pouch opens and the young escape. Our United States pipe- 

 fishes belong tp the genus Siphostoma, the common pipefish being 

 8. fuscum, which is found upon the Atlantic coast. 



The Australian sea-horse also occurs in Europe, and according 

 to Goode, "there have been only one or two instances of the cap- 

 ture of this fish north of Cape Cod; one was seined with a school 

 of mackerel on George's bank in August, 1873. Two or three 

 specimens have been taken at Wood's Holl during the last ten 

 years, and instances of their capture in Connecticut and about 

 the mouth of the Hudson are not rare. On the New Jersey coast 

 and south to the Gulf of Mexico it appears to be very abundant." 

 Seen upon lateral aspect, the upper half of the sea-horse is apt to 

 remind one of the piece in a set of chessmen called the "knight," 

 and it is impossible for one not to be struck by its extraordinary 

 equine physiognomy. The lower half of the body is composed of 

 the long, tapering, prehensile tail, which is of a quadrangular 



