228 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



continually outflanked, and either retires sulkily to its basement apartments or altogether 

 abandons the field of its repeated discomfiture to the triumphant polyps. This inter- 

 pretation affords a logical explanation of the fact that the majority of the adult growths 

 are untenanted by worms, and for the circumstance that it was not until an extensive 

 colony, as here recorded, was available for investigation that the precise nature of this 

 anomalous compound organisation, however shrewdly guessed at, could be absolutely 

 determined. 



The Coral fauna of the Australian seas, and more especially with relation to its 

 redundant development on the Queensland coast, has been so fully dealt with in 

 the author's previous volume, " The Great Barrier Reef of Australia," that the 

 extensive reference to this subject that might have otherwise been appropriately allocated 

 to this Chapter would be scarcely justified. Considerable space has, moreover, been 

 devoted to this very prominent marine zoological group in Chapter V., dealing with 

 Houtman's Abrolhos Islands. A conspicuous feature in that section was the attempted 

 portrayal, in something of its natural tints, of one of the very characteristic coral 

 growths in Pelsart Island Lagoon. As a counterfoil to that picture, the portraiture 

 of an entirely distinct type of coral reef formation, with the corresponding reproduction 

 of the life colours and environments of its component units, has been reproduced as 

 the frontispiece to this volume. The particular scene depicted in this instance is an 

 area of the tidally-exposed fringing reef in the vicinity of the Palm Islands, North 

 Queensland. Several photographic views of corresponding and neighbouring reef areas 

 are represented by Plates VI. and X. of the author's " Barrier Reef" volume, but, neces- 

 sarily under such circumstances, in simple monochrome. The attempt here made to por- 

 tray such a reef scene with an approximation to its natural colouring and as sketched 

 on the spot will suffice, if crude, to convey to those unfamiliar with such scenery 

 a more realistic and natural aspect than can be imparted by an ordinary photograph. 



This individual reef scene having, as a matter of fact, been taken from a point 

 closely adjacent to that of the photograph reproduced in Plate VI., No. 2, of the 

 author's above quoted volume, the context descriptive of that illustration is in the 

 main applicable to the present one. The basis of the exposed reef-area in the fore- 

 ground is in either case composed of a solid mass of a coral species referable to the 

 genus Porites, which is remarkable for both the minute size of its component cells 

 or calicles, and at the same time for the colossal dimensions to which the compound 

 masses or coralla may ultimately attain. The example here figured measures over 

 thirty feet in diameter, and ten or twelve feet deep, but originated, it may be 



