In _Pygosteus pungitius_, a type of almost equally wide range, there are nine or ten dorsal spines and the body is more slender. All kinds of waters of the north on both continents may yield this species or its allies and variations, mailed or naked. The naked, _Apeltes quadracus_, is found in the sea only, along the New England coast. [Illustration: FIG. 182.—Three-spined Stickleback, _Gasterosteus aculeatus_ L. Wood's Hole, Mass. ] [Illustration: FIG. 183.—Four-spined Stickleback, _Apeltes quadracus_ Mitchill. Wood's Hole, Mass. ] _Eucalia inconstans_ is the stickleback of the clear brook from New York to Indiana and Minnesota. The male is jet black in spring with the sheen of burnished copper and he is intensely active in his work of protecting the eggs of his own species and destroying the eggs and fry of others. _Spinachia spinachia_ is a large sea stickleback of Europe with many dorsal spines. No fossil _Gasterosteidæ_ are recorded, and the family, while the least specialized in most regards, is certainly not the most primitive of the suborder. =The Aulorhynchidæ.=—Closely related to the sticklebacks is the small family of _Aulorhynchidæ_, with four soft rays in the ventral fins. _Aulorhynchus_, like _Spinachia_, has many dorsal spines and an elongate snout approaching that of a trumpet-fish. _Aulorhynchus flavidus_ lives on the coast of California and _Aulichthys japonicus_ in Japan. The extinct family of _Protosyngnathidæ_ is near _Aulorhynchus_, with the snout tubular, the ribs free, not anchylosed as in _Aulorhynchus_, and with the first vertebræ fused, forming one large one as in _Aulostomus_. _Protosyngnathus sumatrensis_ occurs in Sumatra. _Protaulopsis bolcensis_ of the Eocene of Italy has the ventral fins farther back, and is probably more primitive than the sticklebacks.