352 
GREATER PIPEFISH. 
the vent, of what he believed to be the female, which at the 
proper season was rent asunder in order to allow the escape 
of the young; and the consideration of this supposed fact of the 
disruption and its consequences has produced in Lacepede an 
expression of poetic sympathy, in which he dwells on the self- 
sacrifice which this fish has shewn itself thus ready to make 
for the sake of its offspring. But later observation has rectified 
much of the error into which the older naturalists had very 
naturally fallen; and has thus made the proceeding of the 
production of its young intelligible; while in fact the singularity 
of the process is rendered even more remarkable than formerly 
it was supposed to be. 
The species now under consideration, together with the 
Broad-nosed Pipefish, are in truth what is now known by the 
term Marsupial animals; but with this difference from the 
quadrupeds thus designated, that in the present instance, while 
the first production of the eggs or roe is in the body of the 
female, (in which sex no caudal pouch e.xists,) at the time of 
their being rendered fertile, they are transferred to the male, 
which only possesses a pouch, and in which they pass through 
the further stages of their development, until they have become 
duly qualified for the duties of active life in the sea. Before 
impregnation the slit which forms the entrance of the pouch is 
sealed by adhesion, and so it becomes again when the eggs 
have been received into it, although, as we shall see, this is 
not usually a single proceeding, once and for all. 
Mr. Jenyns found these fish with enlarged roe when only 
four inches in length; but our observations arc from individuals 
of mature growth, in which still a portion of the actual pro- 
ceeding in the transferrence of the grains remains obscure: 
but it is thus briefly referred to by Mr. Andrews, of Dublin, 
in the “Zoologist” for 1860, p. 7052: — “In shoal- water or a 
low tide these fish may sometimes be seen in pairs side by 
side, apparently stationary on some rocky stone. At this time 
the ova — the capsules but imperfectly matured — are liberated 
from the female, and received into the abdominal sac, the male 
fish having the power of expanding the lappings of the sac, 
and attaching the ova by a highly viscid or glutinous secretion.” 
Rondeletius found ova in the pouch so earl)'- in the year as 
the beginning of winter, and on further search he discovered 
