Fishes . ,in Japan. The largest species, teninches long, are Hippocampus i)i-gens of Lower California and kel-loggi in Japan. Many species, es-pecially of the smaller ones, havethe spines of the bony plates of thebody ending in fleshy flaps. Theseare sometimes so enlarged as tosimulate leaves of seaweed, thusserving for the etlicient protectionof the species. These flaps aredeveloped to an extreme degree inPhyllopteryx eques, a pipehsh of the East fossil sea-horses are known. The following account of the breeding-habits of our smallestsea-horse {Hippocampus zostercc) was prepared by
Fishes . ,in Japan. The largest species, teninches long, are Hippocampus i)i-gens of Lower California and kel-loggi in Japan. Many species, es-pecially of the smaller ones, havethe spines of the bony plates of thebody ending in fleshy flaps. Theseare sometimes so enlarged as tosimulate leaves of seaweed, thusserving for the etlicient protectionof the species. These flaps aredeveloped to an extreme degree inPhyllopteryx eques, a pipehsh of the East fossil sea-horses are known. The following account of the breeding-habits of our smallestsea-horse {Hippocampus zostercc) was prepared by the writerfor a book of childrens stories: He was a little bit of a sea-horse and his name was Hippo-campus. He was not more than an inch long, and he had ared stripe on the fin on his back, and his head was made of boneand it had a shape just like a horses head, but he ran out to apoint at his tail, and his head and his tail were all covered withbone. He lived in the Grand Lagoon at Pensacola in Florida,. Fig. 308. —Sea-liorse, Hippocampushuasonius Dekay. Virginia. 454 Phthinobranchii where the water is shallow and warm and there are lots ofseaweeds. So he wound his tail around a stem of seaweedand hung with his head down, waiting to see what would happennext, and then he saw another little sea-horse hanging onanother seaweed. And the other sea-horse put out a lot oflittle eggs, and the little eggs all lay on the bottom of the seaat the foot of the seaweed. So Hippocampus crawled downfrom the seaweed where he was and gathered up all those littleeggs, and down on the under side of his tail where the skin issoft he made a long slit for a pocket, and then he stuffed allthe eggs into this pocket and fastened it together and stuck itwith some slime. So he had all the other sea-horses eggs inhis own pocket. Then he went up on the sea wrack again and twisted histail around it, and hung there with his head down to see whatwould happen next. The sun shone down on him, and by andby al
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