SPINOUS PIPE-FISHES. 
197 
I crustaceous animals ; and in reference to the tubu- 
lar mouth, it is probable that by dilating the 
throat, these fishes can draw their food up their • 
cylindrical beak, as water is drawn up the pipe of 
I a syringe. The beak-like mouth is also well 
] adapted for detaching minute animals from among 
, the various sorts of sea-weed. The fiesh of the 
I Trumpet-fish is considered good.” 
i The natural history of Fishes is very meagre, 
i as compared with the other branches of Zoology. 
! We have exceedingly few of those details of 
; manners, those narratives of instinctive actions, 
I those accounts of curious contrivances and strata- 
i gems by which the great purposes of animal life 
I are fulfilled, those delightful anecdotes of in- 
j dividual biography, ► — ^that throw such a charm 
over the history of other Classes of Vertebrate 
animals. Yet we doubt not that there exist abun- 
dant materials for such narratives, could we 
but get at them ; the observations very recently 
published on the nest-making habits of certain 
fishes, long familiar to us, but hitherto unsus- 
pected of any such instincts, intimate to us that 
this Class of living beings is not destitute of 
those endowments which so beautifully illus- 
trate the inexhaustible resources of wdsdom and 
beneficent power that belong to God, and which 
are seen in endless variety in those creatures 
which are patent to our observations. A great, 
and we fear insuperable, difficulty which the 
naturalist meets with in prosecuting his investi- 
gations into the manners and economy of Fishes, 
is the nature of the element in which they live. 
Even the common species of our rivers and ponds 
