BY CHARLES HEDLEY. 413 



■empty Nautilus shells, pumice, coco-nuts and fruits of Barring- 

 tonia hutonica* My colleague, Mr. T. Whitelegge, has shown 

 me pieces of pumice which he collected on a beach near Sydney. 

 To these adhered young coralla of PocUlojmra similar to those 

 observed by Kent in Queensland. The unique occurrence of a 

 live PociUopora on rocks near S3'dne3' noted by Mr. Whitelegge 

 may be thus explained.! 



Guppy furnishes the following evidence from the Indian Ocean: 

 " Washed up on the weather side of North Keeling Island I found 

 a piece of Krakatoa pumice, on which had grown four bosses of a 

 pretty incrusting species of PociUopora, each of the size of a 

 dollar and \ to \, inch in thickness. This piece of ^pumice still 

 floated buoyantly, and had evidently been caught in the reef for 

 some time before it had been thrown up on the beach. Mrs. 

 Ross showed me specimens about three times the size, of the same 

 species of PociUopora, that had grown on a large log of timber, 

 which having been caught in the outer edge of the reef for about 

 a fortnight, had then been rolled on shore. . . . Mr. Ross 

 subsequently informed me that not infrequently large blocks of 

 corals, mostly of the massive astrean type, and foreign to the 

 atoll, are washed ashore on the western coasts of the eastern 

 islands. He showed me one in his possession, a massive astrean 

 coral, which was six feet in circumference and weighed 88 lbs., 

 and in order to convince me of its buoyancy he had it carried to 

 the beach and thrown into the water, when it floated readily."| 



F. Jousseaume states that corals attach themselves even to the 

 shells of turtles and the skins of marine animals.§ 



The Nereid worm " Palolo " extends from Torres Straits and 

 the continental islands eastwards to Samoa and Tonga, but is 

 unknown to the natives of the Ellice, the Gilberts or the 



* Heclley— Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. xxiv. 1899, p. 192. 



t Whitelegge— Proc. Roy. Soc. N.S.W. xxiii. 1889, p. 191. 



X Guppy— Scot. Geograph. Mag. v. 1889, p. 288. 



§ Jousseaume — La Philosophic aux prises avec la Mer Rouge, le Dar- 

 winisme et les trois Regnes des corps organises, 1899, p. 241. 



