130 DAHLAK 



one about twelve feet long a couple of strokes off, but it 

 cleared off silently) and the life was certainly nothing like 

 the stupendous, unimaginable turmoil which abounded on 

 the southern barrier, continuously steeped in sim and light 

 as it was, and nourished without doubt, by a constant 

 vivifying marine current. 



On the southern barrier, or more accurately, inside, above 

 and below the southern barrier reef we encountered several 

 new species of fish, new at any rate for Italian museums and 

 institutes. 



The fish passing by were more or less the usual ones — 

 pampano, bream, kingfish, tunny, sharks, barracuda, etc. — 

 but the waters were extremely rich in coral fish. There were 

 Scaridae, coloured green and scarlet with a yellow snout; 

 Labridae with slender, pointed fins, crazy colours and hori- 

 zontally striped mouths ; rainbow Labridae and Labridae all of 

 one colour but subtly shaded; butterfly fish, the most fan- 

 tastic of tropical fish; groupers in every hole, flying scorpion 

 fish, porcupine and puffer fish, box fish and morays, trigger 

 fish, diagrams, surgeon fish and snappers and hundreds upon 

 hundreds of others long, short, tapered and thick-set, 

 armoured and naked, vagabond and sedentary. It was a 

 flourishing, democratic community where everyone minded 

 his own business without harming his neighbour, and except 

 for the big plunderers, grazed mostly on what the reef 

 offered with open arms. In fact, as could be seen close up, 

 the reef was swarming with thousands of small animals — 

 crabs, prawns, molluscs and pipe-fish — and living anemone 

 flowers, sponges of an infinite variety, new kinds of madre- 

 pore coronets, delicate spirographs, thin tubes with evanes- 

 cent flowers on top which withdrew as soon as they had 

 bloomed. . . . You could spend a thousand spellbound hours 

 on the reef 



