HOUTMAN'S ABROLHOS. 149 



commodity ; supplies to the value of from 15,000 to 20,000 being annually 

 exported thence to the Chinese market. From the tropical areas of the Western 

 Australian coast-line, and more particularly from the neighbourhood of King's Sound, 

 a single entirely distinct, and, as compared with the choicer Queensland species, 

 an inferior commercial variety of Beche-de-Mer, nearly allied to, if not identical 

 with what is known in Queensland as " Surf-Red," Actinopyga mauritiana, is collected 

 for export. Neither has a diligent investigation, made with the express object of 

 discovering the presence of other more valuable species, so far proved successful. 

 It was consequently a most unexpected surprise to the writer, in the course 

 of his explorations of the Pelsart Island reefs in Houtman's Abrolhos, to meet with 

 not only one, but no less than three of the most esteemed Torres Straits and North 

 Queensland varieties. These several species are commercially known in the Queensland 

 market as " Black Fish," " Red Fish," and " Teat Fish," or, in the Chinese vernacular as 

 " Woo-Sum," " Hung-Hur " and " See-Ok-Sum." On spirit-preserved specimens of these 

 varieties being submitted to the British Museum Echinoderm specialist, Professor 

 Jeffry Bell, that authority decided that only one of these, the " Red Fish," Actinopyga 

 obesa, had hitherto been associated with a scientific name, and the writer has 

 accordingly portrayed and describe the remaining two, " Black Fish " and " Teat Fish," 

 in his treatise on the Great Barrier Reef, under the respective titles of Actinopyga 

 polymorpha and Holothuria mammifera. 



The relatively short time available for the exploration of favourable Beche-de- 

 Mer feeding grounds among the Abrolhos reefs revealed the presence of all of the 

 three above-mentioned valuable commercial varieties in tolerable abundance, and there is 

 little doubt that, in combination with the development of other fishery potentialities 

 of the district, the systematic conservation and export of Abrolhos B6che-de-Mer 

 would constitute a remunerative source of income. One other essentially North 

 Australian representative of the Holothuridce, though having no intrinsic commercial 

 value, was observed by the writer at the Houtman's Abrolhos. This was the Synapta 

 Beselli, of Semper, a species first discovered by that naturalist in the Philippine 

 Islands, and remarkable for its extraordinary length, no less^ than five or six feet when 

 fully extended, and the nodulated, quadrangular contour of its transparent pink, or 

 more or less mottled brown, integument. This species occurred in considerable 

 abundance on the reefs in the neighbourhood of Warrior Island, Torres Straits, but, 

 so far as the writer's investigations have extended, does not occur on the mainland 

 coral reefs of Western Australia. 



