398 FISHES OF THE FIRTH OF FORTH. 



the caudal rounded at the end ; and the body with sixty- 

 three osseous shields. 



The Deep-nosed Pipe-Fish is rather rare in the Firth of 

 Forth, although a place apparently favourable for its habits. 

 It frequents water from three to four feet deep, where the 

 bottom is of a sandy nature and covered with the smaller 

 kinds of/wcz, among which it prowls about in search of mi- 

 nute aquatic insects. I have taken them in pools, at North 

 Berwick, left by the receding of the tide, but further up 

 the Firth they seem but little known. It is a common fish 

 on the east coast of England, as well as along the shores of 

 Devonshire and Cornwall. At Brixham in the month of 

 September, I saw as many as four dozen taken at one haul 

 of a net, and I was informed at the same time by the fish- 

 ermen, that in the earlier part of the season they would 

 sometimes enclose five times that number ; which being of 

 no service, are invariably returned again to the sea. 



Syngnathus ^equoreus.* — The jEquoreal Pipe-Fish. 



Specific Characters. — Pectoral fins wanting ; caudal obsolete ; dor- 

 sal and vent nearly in the middle of the entire length. 



Description. — " Length from twenty to twenty-four inches, readi- 

 ly distinguished from both the foregoing species by the want of the 

 pectoral and anal fins. Form slender and very much elongated ; 

 body compressed, with an acute dorsal and abdominal ridge, also 

 with three slight ridges on each side, hence the trunk from the gills 

 to the vent is octangular ; the tail is obsoletely quadrangular, becom- 

 ing almost round towards the tip, which is extremely tapering ; trans- 

 verse shields or plates, between the gills and tlie vent, twenty-eight 

 in number ; from the vent to the extremity of the tail, sixty or more, 

 but, from the extreme minuteness of the last few not admitting of 

 being counted with exactness ; head not more than one-twelfth of 

 the entire length, without any elevated ridge on the occiput ; snout 

 narrower than the head, similar in shape to that of S. acus, but much 

 shorter in relation to the entire length of the fish ; dorsal occupying 



* Syngnatlvis ccqnoreus, Auctorum. 



