358 
OCEAN PIPEFISI. 
suddenly fell as it approached the fin, and began again behind 
it, more rounded, and gradually disappearing along the caudal 
portion, with a depression or channel along each side of the 
base of the fin. The ventral ridge was slight, and the only 
mark of an angle was slight along the side, bending down and 
ending at the vent; behind this point round, tapering and 
ending in a small hut well-marked fin, with five rays. The 
colour yellowis.i brown, dark along the dorsal ridge, belly 
yellowish; a brownish pink stripe from each side of the upper 
jaw through the eye to the upper border of the gill-covers. 
I have possessed a male of the acknowledged Ocean Pipefish 
which in length measured twenty-six inches, and a female but 
little short of the same dimensions; but there was a remarkable 
difference in the structure of both of them from that given 
above. They were more slender, and the female especially so. 
But the more remarkable difference was in the ridge along 
the back to the dorsal fin, which has, from near the head 
backward, a membrane almost as broad as the dorsal fin itself, 
and the line of direction passed on straight to the extremity, 
without that gap or depression in which the dorsal fin was 
situated in the first-named example. In the latter also the tail 
portion ended without a distinctly visible fin, in this respect 
having some resemblance to the species coming next under our 
notice, and of which I shall make a comparison with the Ocean 
Pipefish; but this defect may have been the result of accident. 
