OCEAN rU'EFISn. 
vent forward, Avhere that part is flattened for the purpose of 
sustaining them until they become developed into life, but of 
which some of the particulars have been better observed in 
the species next to be described. Mr. Andrews adds, “I have 
noticed S. (squoreus greedily stripping the stems of Zostcra 
marina of the young of Anthea cereus, which were attached in 
a seiniglutinous state.” 
What I have considered the Ocean Pipefish has been met 
with under such considerable difference of structure as to raise 
the supposition that if the variation is not to be ascribed to 
accident or monstrosity, it must be the mark of a distinct 
species hitherto not known among British fishes. On this 
account it is judged proper to give a separate description of 
each of these supposed species or varieties, with characteristic 
figures, by means of which a further inquiry may enable an 
observer to decide the truth of the matter. 
It was in July, which is the season when these and the 
kindred fish are most commonly and abundantly seen, that an 
example now to be described was thrown on shore in a storm; 
and on examination it proved to be a female with fully 
enlarged roe. It measured twenty-two inches in length, where 
deepest measuring an inch; the body much more compressed 
than in the other known kinds of British Pipefishes, and which 
is the acknowledged character of the Ocean Pipefish, but 
scarcely or not at all angular from the dorsal to the ventral 
ridge; the plates not to be counted when the fish was newly 
from the water; but the perpendicular lines numbered fifty- 
eight, the first obscure, the second crooked, and the order 
continued more than an inch beyond the vent. It was found 
that two of those lines answer to a single plate. Above the 
eye less elevated than in the S. acus, rising above the gill- 
cover; from the snout to the hindmost border of the eye an 
inch, and to the border of the gill-plate an inch and seven 
lines, to the vent less than half the whole length. Two thirds 
of the dorsid fin before the line of the vent, with forty-two 
rays; but what especially marked this example, in common 
with that one presently to be described, and differing from all 
other of our known species, was (in this case) a narrow 
membrane, which ran along the ridge of the back to near 
the dorsal fin. In the present instance this dorsal ridge 
