Zoology.-] NATURAL HISTORY OF VICTORIA. [Fishes. 



their inrolled prehensile tails, they maintain an upright watchful 

 attitude, balancing themselves by their pectoral fins, and 

 rolling their bright, prominent, yellow eyes about in all directions, 

 one often directed forwards and the other backwards, like the 

 chameleon. 



Like all the family Syngnathidce, or Pipe-fishes, the males 

 carry the eggs about for a period in a sac along the under 

 surface of the tail — a marsupial habit " with a difference," as 

 far as the sex is concerned, of a curiously suggestive kind, as to 

 why the males should not in other creatures have the trouble of 

 protecting the young instead of the almost universal arrangement 

 of leaving it to the females. 



This little species is common in Hobson's Bay, but has not been 

 figured before. 



Explanation of Figures. 



Plate 65. — Fig. 2, large specimen, natural size. Fig. 2a, tip of snout, magnified 3 diameters, 

 to show the little terminal jaws. 



Frederick McCoy. 



[22] 



