220 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



by the writer consorting with it under corresponding conditions on the Queensland 

 coast. Both of them were referable to the genus Amphiprion of the family of the 

 Pomacentridse. These fish are characterised by their brilliantly contrasting tints, 

 broad alternating bands of scarlet and white, or black and white being usually 

 predominant. In the two Queensland types, Amphiprion bicinctus and A. percula, 

 both fish are notable for their orange-vermilion hue, this ground colour being 

 diversified in the first-named species by two, and in the second one by three 

 transverse white bands. Mention was also made of a species that had been met 

 with by the writer at Port Darwin, apparently identical with Amphiprion melanopus. 

 In this type a single white band is present which, traversing the fish's head 

 and passing under its chin, communicates to it the most ludicrous appearance of 

 having its face tied up for the toothache. A somewhat similar single white-banded 

 species of Amphiprion was found sparingly associated with Discosoma Kenti at the 

 Lacepede Islands. The more common form, however, found consorting sociably with 

 this anemone was a species having, like Amphiprion percula, three white bands, but 

 the body in place of being scarlet was almost black, and the fins were scarlet without 

 the black and white borders distinctive of the last-named form. In many respects the 

 species appears to coincide with the Amphiprion Clarkii of Cuvier and Valenciennes, 

 the distribution of which has been recorded as extending from Mozambique to 

 Ceylon, Singapore, and China. 



In addition to the two above-named fish, a small species of crab, corresponding 

 in shape and size with the little English flat crab, Platysoma platycheles, and 

 apparently referable to the same genus, was found amicably sharing with the fish the 

 free lodging and sheltering protection afforded by the huge anemone's convoluted disc 

 and spreading tentacles. From among a number of plates exposed a negative was 

 secured, reproduced in the lower half of Plate XXXIX., in which an example of this 

 anemone with three attendant fish, and also one of the commensal crabs above 

 referred to, is distinctly shown. One of these fish is photographed on the point of 

 making a swimming excursion around the anemone's disc, and another one is, except 

 for its projecting black and white head and shoulders, buried among the anemone's 

 tentacles. This picture, taken vertically through the surface of the water with a 

 whole plate camera, represents the anemone with its attendant fish on a scale of 

 almost precisely one-half of its natural size. It is at the same time worthy of note 

 that the anemone is by no means fully extended, and that its disc when completely 

 opened out would cover an area having a diameter equal to close upon four times 



