192 ACANTHOPTERYGII. FISTULARIADiE. 
crab-pots, in which they have been taken. Their i 
beauty, it is true, occasionally secures them a j 
place on the fishmonger’s stall, when the sped- ; 
mens, at least of the rarer species, are pretty sure I 
to be soon snatched up, not for the table, but for | 
the shelves of some museum. i 
Family XVII. Fistulariad^e. I 
j! 
{Spinous Fipe-fisJies^) j 
Some of the Lahridce have the faculty of pro- 
truding the mouth so excessively as to form a j 
tube ; and there is one genus, the Green Wrasses 
{Gomphosis)^ of Ceylon, in which the mouth is 11 
not protractile, but the bones are lengthened into 
a permanent slender tube, at the extremity of 
which is placed the mouth. Thus we are pre- j 
pared for the very limited but very curious and 1 1 
interesting family of tube-mouthed fishes before | 
us. It has, however, other analogies, among the ■ 
soft-finned fishes ; as in the curious genus Mor^ | 
myrus, found only in the Nile, considered by ! 
Cuvier, as allied to the Pikes, which have a small j 
mouth set at the end of a slender tube ; but es- j 
pecially in the SyngnathidcB, perhaps the most i 
interesting of the whole Class, for the singularity i 
of their organization and economy, in which the ? 
bones of the face are prolonged into a tubular | 
snout, so similar to that of the present Family, f 
that both alike have received the popular appel- U 
lation of Pipe-fishes. Sj 
The Fistulariadcej then, are characterized by |j] 
having the face prolonged into a slender tube |j 
projecting forwards, composed of elongations of jj' 
