PIPE-FISHES AND SEA-HORSES 



357 



when the eggs are ready for transference, the male and female fishes swim round 

 and round one another for a time, and then intertwine their bodies in the form of 

 a double letter S, with the heads of each turned outwards. In this position the 

 eggs are transferred from the ovary of the female to the pouch of the male when 

 the two are in contact, about a dozen eggs being received in the pouch where they 

 are presumably fertilised. The male then performs a series of evolutions for the 

 purpose of shaking clown the eggs into the end of the pouch, on the completion 

 of which the process of transference is resumed. The eggs, which soon become 





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SEA HORSE. 



fixed to the pouch, are hatched in ten days. To bring about the shaking clown 

 process the male stands nearly vertically, and, resting his caudal fin and a small 

 part of the tail on the bottom of the sea, bends backwards and forwards, and 

 twists his body spirally from above downward. This is repeated until the eggs 

 have been moved into the posterior end of the pouch, when the process is continued 

 until the pouch is filled. Of the sea-horses, the general appearance of which will 

 be sufficiently familiar to most readers, the typical Hippocampus antiquorum has 

 a very wide range, occurring in regions as widely sundered from one another as the 

 British Islands, Japan, and Australia. 



