Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/157

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The Pipefishes are rather uninteresting tenants of an Aquarium; their fins are small and of little power, hence their motions are ordinarily slow. They hang about in all attitudes, of which the perpendicular, either with the head upward or downward,—is a favourite one. I have a very young specimen of the Great Pipe (Syngnathus acus), a half grown Deep-nose (S. typhle), and a rather large Æquoreal (S. æquoreus), about 15 inches long. This last is slow and unwieldy, possessing no fin but the dorsal, while the former two have tiny pectorals which are fluttered with a rapid vibration, and a small fan-like caudal. All the species flutter the delicate and filmy dorsal fin, at intervals, though but little effect can be produced by such an organ in locomotion.

The dredge frequently brings up specimens of a pretty little fish adhering to the interior of old bivalve shells, or to stones. It is the Two-spotted Sucker (Lepidogaster bimaculatus), which owes its generic name to the circumstance of the ventral fins being united into a concave disk; by the application of which to any smooth surface, and the muscular withdrawal of the central parts, producing a vacuum, the animal adheres with considerable force; exactly on the principle of those suckers that children make of a piece of wetted leather at the end of a string. The little fish is not more than two inches long, somewhat tadpole-shaped, but prettily coloured of a pale crimson or