FISH AND FISHERIES. 29 
that of a horse. They are mostly tropical, and they belong to an order 
which have the gills laminated, but composed of small rounded lobes 
attached to the branchial arches. ‘he gill-cover is a large simple 
plate. One wonderful peculiarity in the genus Hippocampus is that the 
males carry the eggs in a sac at the base of the tail, opening near the 
vent. The body is divided into regular rings and transverse ridges, and 
where these cross each other, the tough, leathery skin has tubercles or 
points. The tail is square and apparently rigid, but it easily curls up 
and seizes hold of any object, by means of which it anchors itself. 
‘When swimming about the Sea-horse keeps an upright position, but 
the tail is ready to grasp any object it meets in the water. It quickly 
entwines in any direction round weeds or other objects, and darts at 
its prey with great quickness. When the pectoral fins are large and 
expanded, so as to be like wings, then the Sea-horses are said to belong 
to another order, Pegasidw, or Flying-horses, of which we have two 
Species in Australia (Pegasus natans, Moreton Bay and Torres Straits, and 
P. lancifer in Tasmania), but none in New South Wales. 
The Phyllopteryx. 
But of all the curious fishes that ever were seen Phyllopterys is the 
most extraordinary. It is the ghost of a sea-horse, with its winding- 
sheet all in ribbons around it; and even as a ghost it seems in the very 
last: stage of emaciation, literally all skin and grief. The process of 
development by which this fish attained to such a state must be the 
most miserable chapter in the history of “natural selection.” If this 
be the “survival of the fittest,” it is easy to understand what has become 
of the rest. Natural selection must have inflicted upon the family 
harder terms than those which were imposed on Count Ugolino by his 
enemies. There is a good likeness of one species in Gtinther’s Study of 
Fishes, p. 682. Never did the famishing spectres of the ancient 
mariner’s experience present such painful spectacles. If these creatures 
be horses, they must be the lineal descendants of those which were 
trained to live on nothing, but unfortunately perished ere the experiment 
had quite concluded. The odd thing about these strange fishes is that 
their tattered cerements are like in shape and colour to the sea-weed they 
frequent, so that they hide and feed with safety. Thus the long ends 
of ribs which seem to poke through the skin to excite our compassion 
are really “ protective resemblances,” and serve to allure the prey more 
effectually within reach of these awful ghouls. The Phyllopteryx is 
therefore, in spite of his rags and emaciation, an impostor, and like many 
a sturdy human beggar puts on the aspect of misery more effectually to 
ply his trade. The appendages to the spines are well worth a study. 
Just as the leaf-insect is imitative of a leaf, and the staff insect of a twig, 
so here is a fish like a bunch of sea-weed. If this is development, it 
stopped here only just in time; one step more and it would have been 
‘a bunch of kelp. 
