Volume 39, Plate XVIII / Ichthyology (Fish)

Sand-Eel, Horner, or Hornels & Great Pipe-Fish

Ammodytes Tobianus & Sygnathus Acus

1. The Sand-Eel, Horner, or Hornels. The larger of the two sand-eels, usually ten to fifteen inches, this species is comparatively rare beside the Common Launce, occasionally seen swimming near shore and caught with a bait but commonly burying itself four to six inches in moist sand when the tide retires. Found on most fine-sand beaches and frequent in the Firth of Forth, where it is called the Horner, it spawns in September and its flesh is esteemed palatable.
2. Great Pipe-Fish. Reaching twelve to sixteen inches in our seas, the Great Pipe-Fish has an angular body covered by about sixty-three striated osseous plates, a large mussel-shaped operculum, and a fan-like tail, the male bearing a marsupial pouch into which the female’s ova are transferred to be matured and hatched. The most common of its family, with the young retiring to that pouch a while after birth, it lurks under seaweed and is of no use as food or bait.