Tue ZooLocist—OcrToBer, 1872. 3275 
of its nose. The specimen is sixteen inches and four-eighths long over all; 
vent nine inches and four-eighths from tip of the snout ; dorsal commences 
seven inches and three-eighths from tip of snout, is three inches long, and has 
forty-three soft rays, the last bifid; no other fin of any sort; greatest depth 
of the fish four-eighths of an inch at four inches and six-eighths from 
snout, and greatest girth at same place. Form nearly cylindrical, 
tapering from the point of greatest girth to tail, regularly with the excep- 
tion of a slight depression immediately behind the vent. The tail at its 
extremity had a clear diameter of one-sixteenth of an inch, and under a 
sixteen-magnifying power showed a smooth unbroken surface, with no sign 
whatever of a caudal fin. The very slight variance from the cylindrical 
which the body shows is in the direction of a pentagonal form. There are 
just perceptible a ridge on the belly, one on each lower side, and one on 
each upper side of the fish. The skin is quite smooth and clean, of a rich 
red-brown ground, burnished so as to make the fish seem semi-translucent 
(towards the tail it was actually so), and crossed at every seventh of an inch 
from head to one inch behind vent by perpendicular lines of a steel-blue or 
gray, extending from just above the upper side ridge to the lower side ridge, 
alternately straight-sided and zigzag, and becoming duller in colour as they 
approached the vent; these lines were each about one forty-eighth of an 
inch wide, and there were sixty-four of them in all. The back is perfectly 
smooth, and is as far as the dorsal faintly speckled with the same blue or 
gray colour. Three hours after the fish was dead the back exhibited the 
smooth appearance of life only when it was slightly arched. When the fish 
was laid flat on its belly it was seen that each zigzag line of the side was 
connected with the corresponding zigzag line on the other side by a crease 
over the back, and these creases continued regularly to the tail far beyond 
the point at which the stripes ceased to be visible. In the belly ridge 
exactly underneath each zigzag there was (after death) the appearance of a 
little notch or depression, but it was not perceptible to the touch. As the 
fish became drier the spots at which each zigzag crossed the side ridges 
became the centres of a set of radiating lines, no doubt corresponding to the 
scales of the other species, and rudimentary in tlfis specimen. There was 
no marsupial pouch. Bloch, in the rare edition of his work published 
1785-6, describes (vol. ii. p. 104) and figures a Syngnathus which he calls 
“le serpent de mer,” and identifies with the 8. Ophidion of Linnzus and 
the “little pipe-fish” of Pennant. He says it is distinguished from all other 
pipe-fishes by its round instead of angular body ; that it is articulated like a 
worm, having along its sides “ feeble” angles crossed (interrompues ) by four 
blue lines (but he figures these lines as longitudinal): general colour green ; 
dorsal fin-rays thirty-four, and no other fins ; fish of the size of a swan-quill ; 
habitat, North Sea and Baltic. This description is nearer my specimen 
than any other; but the differences are clearly sufficient to distinguish the 
