DOUBI.Y SPOTTED SDCKER. 
199 
motion. 'While quiet, and attached by its suc'ker to the cup, 
the tail was usually thrown forward either to the right or left, 
and so bent that its fin reached to the gills, in the manner of 
Montagu’s Sucker, and in this posture it was able to move 
forward, as if by the action of the ventral fins. The grains of 
spawn were of large size in May; and on this portion of its 
history, Mr. Thompson, in his “Natural History of Ireland,” 
vol. iv, affords us some further information. He says, “Mr. 
Hyndman, when dredging (the 20th. of June,) off St.John’s 
Point, County of Down, brought up from the depth of fifteen 
fathoms, a perfect and full-grown specimen of the bivalve shell 
Venus Virginea, in which were a Lepadogaster bimaculatus, 
with its ova and young, some only of which had made their 
appearance; and the same gentleman at the end of August, in 
the same year, dredged in Belfast bay a single full-grown valve 
of Pectunculus pilosus, the hollow of which was closely studded 
over for the space of a square inch with the ova of this species, 
each ovum touching or close to the next one. These ova are 
deposited singly over the surface of the shell on which every 
one rests; each ovum globular, about one sixteenth of an inch 
in diameter, which is remarkably large for a species which I 
have not known to exceed two inches in length. I had fre- 
quently seen this species when brought up in the dredge within 
old single valves of bivalve shells, but until the instance just 
mentioned occurred I was not aware of the cause of its par- 
tiality for them.” Mr. Thompson, of Weymouth, has observed 
the same thing in the upper valve of an oyster shell, and says^ 
the fish remains near its spawn until it is hatched. 
This fish reaches the length of about two inches, and in 
many particulars bears a not distant likeness to the more common 
Cornish Sucker, although a decided difference will be seen 
between them when examples of each are laid together. Thus 
in the present species the cheeks are not so full, and the 
snout is shorter and sharper. The colour is always very 
different, being of a light reddish orange, without those spots 
which arc behind the eyes in the Cornish Sucker, and which 
are always present, even in small examples of that species. 
The tail in each is more or less round; but the most remarkable 
and decisive distinction between them is in the situation and 
extent of the dorsal and anal fins, which are short in themselves, 
