SYNGNATIIVS, the a genus of fishes of the order Cartilaginei. Ge neric character : snout nearly cylindrical; mouth terminal, without teeth or tongue, and furnished with a lid ; body lengthen ed, jointed, and mailed with many-sided scales ; no ventral fins. These fishes fre quent the coasts of the sea, and subsist upon worms and insects, and the ova of fishes. There are eight species, of which we shall notice the following : S. acus, or the great pipe-fish, some times attains the length even of three feet, but is generally only fourteen inches tong, extremely slender, and tapering to wards the extremity. Its ova are found lying, in spring, in a longitudinal channel at the bottom of the abdomen, and the young are produced from this groove, completely formed. It is found in the seas of Europe.
The S. hippocampus, or sea-horse pipe fish, inhabits the shores of the European and Indian seas, and is about ten inches long. When the head is bent downwards,
it has a very considerable resemblance to that of a horse.
S. fbliatus, or the foliated pipe-fish, is the most singular species of the genus, and this singularity consists chiefly in its possessing appendages, situated on very strong and rough spines, on the back, tail, and abdomen, of the shape of leaves, and which might easily be supposed, by a cursory observer, the real leaves of some of the fuci tribe. In the one presented to Sir Joseph Banks, and engraved in Shaw's Zoology, there are fourteen of these curious processes. This animal presents one of the most extraordinary objects exhibited by nature in the im mense variety of her living productions. See Pisces, Plate VI. fig. S.