682 
SCANDINAVIAN FISHES. 
The caudal fin is extremely small, pointed, and so 
fragile that it now and then disappears with age. 
In the living fish, according to Fries, the colora- 
tion is of a handsome flame-yellow or brownish yellow. 
Straight across the sides of the trunk and some way 
along the tail the body is marked with somewhat un- 
dulating, parallel, whitish bands, framed with brown. 
These bands are arranged in such a manner that they 
lie alternately at the middle of a ring of plates, alter- 
nately on the diamond-shaped space between two rings, 
the number of the bands thus being double that of the 
plates. The dorsal carina of the females is edged with 
blackish brown (Lillj.). The ventral side is as usual 
lighter, in the males even whitish. A reddish streak 
runs from the tip of the snout to each eye and so on 
across the temples to the gill-opening. 
The iEquoreal Pipefish was known as a Scandi- 
navian species to Strom ( Sondm . Beskr., 1762), but 
was first introduced into the Swedish fauna by Fries. 
It had been described from Scotland by Sibbald in 
1684; and the centre of its geographical range seems 
to lie on the coast of Great Britain. It is common 
among the Orkneys and Shetlands as well as on the 
west coast of France. It also occurs in the Mediter- 
ranean and the Black Sea (Pallas") ; but it does not 
penetrate into the Baltic, though from the Cattegat it 
enters the Sound, where Nilsson met with it on several 
occasions off Landskrona. According to Winther it 
also enters Liim Fjord. To the north, according to 
Collett, it is a stationary fish “almost up to Tromso.” 
Fries, who has left in the Royal Museum numerous 
specimens of the iEquoreal Pipefish from Bohuslan, 
found it to occur sparingly, though not rarely, in that 
locality, among the seaweeds that fringe the seaward 
side of the island-belt. Kroyer says that it is met 
with fairly often in the Cattegat, though in compara- 
tively deep water. Malm, who obtained his large spe- 
cimens in 6 — 14 fathoms of water, and found only 
small ones at a depth of 2 — 4 fathoms, makes the 
same statement of Bohuslan. At Tylo, off Halmstad, 
Ave have found young specimens 14 cm. long, also in 
about 2— 4 fathoms of water. 
“This species,” says Couch 6 , “is more especially an 
inhabitant of the open ocean, where in summer our 
a Rathke did not find it, however, among the fishes of the I 
b Fish. Brit. Isl., vol. IV, p. 356. 
c ibid., p. 359. 
d Andrews, Zoologist, vol. XVIII (1860), p. 7053. 
fishermen report that they see it near the surface over 
a depth of more than fifty fathoms, at a distance from 
land of ten or fifteen leagues.” “Sometimes,” he says 
in another passage 6 , “it abounds in incalculable numbers 
from near the shore to several miles in the open sea; 
and it is then they appear to perform a perhaps limited 
migration or change of quarters; for they swarm at 
the surface in fine weather from the early part of sum- 
mer to its declension; but after this time they are not 
seen, and probably have gone to the bottom, and into 
deeper water. When on our coast their actions are 
amusing, as with their slender and prehensile tail they 
lay hold of some loose and floating object; with the aid 
of which, and the anterior portion of the body free, 
they steer their wandering course by the waving action 
of the dorsal fin.” Their progress thus costs them but 
little trouble; but they also run great risk of being- 
devoured by fishes-of-prey. The stomach of a Pollack 
has been found, according to Couch, to be crammed 
with iEquoreal Pipefish. 
The iEquoreal Pipefish spawns in summer. The 
male and female attach themselves beside each other 
to some sprig of seaweed or stalk of grass-wrack d , and 
the eggs are imbedded in the layer of mucus deve- 
loped on the ventral side of the male, from the vent 
to the isthmus. This layer hardens into a solid disk, 
which, at least at the beginning of the period of gesta- 
tion, may be peeled from the belly, though it then 
leaves in the skin traces of the honeycombed depres- 
sions which have been occupied by the eggs. The eggs 
are considerably smaller than those of the Deep-nosed 
Pipefish, but also far more numerous. In a female 
44 cm. long the ovaries were 84 mm. in length and / 
the eggs about V 2 mm- in diameter. On the ventral 
side of a male, where at the middle of the length of 
the belly the eggs were set in 12 or 13 somewhat irre- 
gular, longitudinal rows, the largest eggs were not 
much more than 1 ,/ 2 mm. in diameter. The narrow 
embryos lie coiled in several rings within the egg; 
when 11 mm. long they have burst the membrane, but 
lie with the head fixed in the cavity where they were 
developed. The head is far less developed than in the 
larva 1 described by Fries of Nerophis lumbriciformis 
(Plate XXIX, fig. 4, a); but the form of the body is 
:-k Sea. 
