364 Journal of Travel and Natural History 



effect of form and colour unequalled by anything I had ever beheld. Here and 

 there was a large clam shell — chama — wedged in between masses of coral, the 

 gaping zigzag mouth covered with the projecting mantle of the deepest Prussian 

 blue ; beds of dark purple long-spined Echini, and the thick black bodies of 

 sea cucumbers — Holotharese — varied the aspect of the sea bottom. In and out 

 of these coral groves, like gorgeous birds in a forest of trees, swarmed the most 

 beautifully coloured and grotesque fishes, some of them intense blue, others 

 bright red, others yellow, black, salmon coloured, and every colour of the rain- 

 bow, curiously barred and banded and bearded, swarming everywhere in little 

 shoals which usually included the same species, though every moment new 

 species more striking than the last came into view. Some, like the little yellow 

 Chaetodons, roamed about singly ; others in large shoals ; some were of consider- 

 able size and seemed to suck in the little ones like motes in the water ; and, in 

 an interval a small shark about lO feet long, swam leisurely along. 



On this reef he made a curious observation, which seems to us 

 to indicate that some sea-anemones have the power of paralyzing or 

 fascinating fishes without actual contact. Dr Collingwood thinks 

 otherwise, and that it is a case of parasitism, that the fish lives and 

 takes refuge in the stomach of the sea-anemone ; but his own ac- 

 count of the incident seems opposed to this. In any view the 

 observation is curious : 



"By far the most remarkable circumstance I met with on the Fiery Cross 

 Reef was tlie discovery of some actinece of enormous size, and of habits no less 

 novel than striking. I oliierved in a shallow spot a large and beautiful con- 

 voluted mass of a light blue colour, which, situated as it was in the midst of 

 coloured corals, I at first supposed to be also a coral. Its singular appearance, 

 however, induced me to feel it, when the peculiar tenaceous touch of a sea 

 anemone made me rapidly withdraw my hand, to which adhered some shre.ls of 

 its blue tentacles. I then perceived that it was an immense actinea, which, 

 when expanded, measured fully two feet in diameter. The tentacles were 

 small, simple, very numerous, and of a deep blue colour ; and the margin of the 

 tentacular ridge was broad, and rounded, and folded in tliiclc convolutions, 

 which concealed the entrance to the digestive cavity. 



" While standing in tlie water breast-high admiring the splendid zoophyte, I 

 noticed a very pretty little fish which hovered in the water close by, and nearly 

 over tbe anemone. This fish was six inches long, the head bright orange, and 

 the body vertically banded with broad rings of opaque white and orange alter- 

 nately, three bands of each. As the fish remained stationary and did not appear 

 to be alarmed at my movements, I made several attempts to catch it, but it 

 always eluded my efforts. Not darting away, however, as might be expected, 

 but always returning presently to the same spot. Wandering about in search 

 of shells and animals, I visited from time to time the place where the anemone 

 was fixed, and each time, in spite of all my disturbance of it, I found }he little 

 fish there also. This singular persistence of the fish to tlie same spot and to 

 the close vicinity of tlie great anemone, aroused in me strong suspicions of the 

 existence of some connexion between them. 



