ON A CASE OF COMMENSALISM. 181 



on the reefs of the China-Sea '). In the vicinity of 

 the isle of Labuan he met with a gigantic specimen of 

 an Anemone and always he noticed a small fish, banded 

 with three broad rings of white and orange alternately, 

 hovering in the water close by the Anemone and always 

 returning to the same spot. Supposing that there was 

 some connexion between them, »he raked with a stick in 

 the body of the Anemone, and dislodged six fishes of the 

 same species, and of various sizes, from the cavity of the 

 zoophyte". He also mentions an other species of fish, be- 

 longing to the same genus, but differing by having black- 

 and cream-coloured vertical bands, that was obtained by 

 Mr. Low from the body of an other fish-sheltering Anemone. 

 In the next year '^} Lieutenant C. C. de Crespigny com- 

 municates about the friendship between the malacopterygian 

 fish Premnas biaculeatus and the Actinia crassicornis, found 

 in the same region. He observed the fish hovering over 

 the Anemone, gently rubbing the tentacula with its pectoral 

 fins. Trying to catch it, »the alarmed fish, instead of 

 swimming away, dived into the body of its friend, the 

 tentacles closing over it and thus burying it in a living 

 tomb". Some years thereafter ^) Dr. C. Ph. Sluiter made 

 an interesting communication about the friendship between 

 two large Anemones and two species of Amphiprion 

 {tunicatus and Clarkii), found by him on the reefs of the 

 bay of Batavia. After having transported those animals 

 in his aquarium, he could observe that the small fishes 

 not only found a shelter for the persecutions of larger 

 predatory fishes between the tentacles of the Anemone, 

 but that they also ate the spoil conquered by this 

 animal, as well as the undigested food, that was casted 

 out. In the splendid work on the Great Barrier Reef 

 by Mr. W. Saville-Kent we find some statements and 



1) Annals and Magaz. of Nat. History, (4) Vol. I, 1868, p. 31. 



2) Proceed. Zoolog. Society, 1869, p. 248. 



3) Zoolog. Anzeiger, Jhrg. XI, 1888, p. 240. 



Notes from the Leyden Museum, Vol. XXIII. 



