S38 



SYNGNATHID/E. 



LOPHOBRANCHH. SYNGNATHIDJE. 





THE SNAKE PIPE-FISH. 



Syrignathus ophidinn, Serpent de Mer, Bloch, pt. iii. pi. 91, fig. 3. 



,, „ Snake Pipe-fish, Shaw, Gen. Zool. vol. v. p. 453, pi. 179. 



„ ,, Longer Pipe-fish, Low, Faun. Oread, p. 179, sp. 1. 



,, „ Snake Pipe-fish, Jenyns, Man. Brit. Vert. p. 487, sp. 



175. 



No species of Syngnathus can better deserve the name of 

 ophidion, snake-like, tlian the present. It is immediately 

 distinguishable from the fish last described, with which alone 

 it is likely to be confounded, by its much more slender as 

 well as rounder body, which scarcely exceeds a goose-quill in 

 size, and by the whole of the dorsal fin being, in a specimen 

 of fourteen inches long, more than half an inch before the 

 middle of the fish. Pennant has figured this fish. No. 61 of 

 plate 26, but not described it. 



In this species, as well as the two others belonging to this 

 second division, neither male nor female possesses an anal 

 pouch, but the ova after exclusion from the abdomen of the 

 female are carried for a time by the male in separate hemi- 

 spheric depressions on the external surface of the abdomen, 

 anterior to the anus. The females have no such depressions. 

 The sexes have been determined by examination of the inter- 



