MARINE MISCELLANEA. 219 



presence of a brilliant scarlet parasitic sponge, which had apparently killed the coral 

 and permeated itself throughout its skeletal tissues. In this manner, this sponge 

 species possessed much in common with the orange-coloured British parasitic type, 

 Cliona celata, which, as is well known, bores into and in time will completely 

 infiltrate and destroy the shells of oysters and other molluscs. Several of the solid 

 forms of Madreporidse, representing such genera as Favia, Creloria and Goniastrsea, 

 were thus found to be completely infiltrated with this sponge. Specimens were 

 secured, and have been contributed to the British Museum, but it is to be 

 regretted that the scarlet pigment tissues of the parasitic organism lose all their 

 colour soon after removal from their native element. 



The Sea Anemones observed by the writer on the Roebuck Bay reefs, and 

 indeed on the Western Australian coast generally, were, in almost all instances, 

 identical with types met with in Torres Straits and on the Great Barrier, and have 

 for the most part been already figured or described in the author's volume bearing the 

 above-named title. At the same time additional observations were made, and 

 satisfactory photographic pictures secured of certain of these species, which invite a brief 

 notice or reproduction in this Chapter. Among the more noteworthy of the species 

 recorded from the Queensland coast were two giant forms, referable to the genus 

 Discbsoma, whose expanded discs might measure as much as, or more than, eighteen 

 inches in diameter. The author's friend, Professor Haddon, a specialist in this branch 

 of zoology, having collected one of these types in Torres Straits, paid the author the 

 compliment of associating it with his name, and he has in reciprocation conferred on 

 the second species the title of Discosoma Haddoni. The most interesting feature 

 concerning these giant Anemones, recorded by the writer in his " Barrier " book, is the 

 circumstance that both of these two species fulfil the rdle of hosts to fish belonging to 

 the genus Amphiprion, a distinct specific form being consorted as a so-called "com- 

 mensal" or lodger with each variety of anemone. Coloured drawings of these two 

 species, with their respective commensal fish, are included in the author's previous 

 volume, as also a photograph, taken vertically through the water, of Discosoma 

 Haddoni. 



In Western Australian waters, and more particularly in the vicinity of the 

 Lacepede Islands, the writer found the species upon which Professor Haddon has 

 conferred the name of Discosoma Kenti, in more abundance. It was here also 

 accompanied by a fish commensal in fact, two distinct varieties but neither of these, 

 though belonging to the same genus, was specifically identical with the species found 



