r 
228 THE SEA-HORSE AND ITS YOUNG. 
my Hippo soon recovered strength, and became for sev- 
eral months a very interesting pet. 
September 7. To-day fortune smiled and brought me 
another “gravid” male Hippocampus. This also, under 
the weakening effects of acclimation, began excluding the 
young, having emitted a full dozen. Circumstances favor- 
ing, and profiting by a varied experience, I was enabled 
to carry my new Hippo safely through the dreaded or- 
deal. Most anxiously was he watched day by day. To 
my astonishment no enlargement of the embryonal sack 
could be detected. I supposed that as the young increased 
in size, the distension of the pouch would go on equally. 
Again my apprehensions were aroused,—now I feared 
that the foetuses were dead ! 
September 21. A red-letter day! To-day near noon 
I observed three young Sea-horses swimming about. 
They had just made their debut. Very minute creatures 
they were; but, to my great joy, nearly perfect. From 
that hour the Pater-mater kept busy setting his progeny 
adrift. At the bottom of the vessel was a broken Winkle- 
shell, put there for the attachment of the animal’s tail, 
when fatigued by swimming, as the Sea-horse is very 
easily tired, and this, monkey-like, is its favorite mode 
of taking rest. The Winkle afforded real help in the 
labor of extruding the young, which is in no sense 
a parturient process, but on the contrary is entirely me- 
chanical, and in the present case was effected in the fol- 
lowing manner. With its abdomen turned towards the 
shell, its tail attached to the under part of it, the body 
erected to its full height, the animal, by a contractile 
- exertion of the proper muscles, would draw itself down- 
wards, and against the shell, thus rubbing the pouch 
upward, and in this simple, yet effective way, expelled 
