MARINE MISCELLANEA. 231 



superimposed or coalescing lamellae measures a yard in height and from four to five 

 feet in diameter. Greater elegance, with little inferior bulk, undoubtedly attaches 

 itself to the finer specimens of Turbinaria compicua depicted on page 233. The largest 

 examples secured of this Turbinarian also measure as much as three feet in height 

 and about four and a half feet in diameter, but, in place of forming more or less solid 

 hemispheres, take the shape of bush-like masses of erect convoluted plates or folia 

 which may be isolated or united with one another in every conceivable fashion. The 

 series of examples of this species contributed by the writer to the British Museum 

 Collection numbered no less than twenty-four, and illustrate every phase of growth, 

 from tiny cups, less than one inch across, to large bushes many feet in circumference. 

 Several of the less advanced developmental phases are, as shown in the photograph 

 reproduced, exhibited in the same table case. A series of small cups, which represent 

 the initial growth phases of the two specific forms, Turbinaria conspicua and 

 T. peltata, natural size, as gathered by the writer growing in close contiguity to one 

 another on the reefs at Port Denison, Queensland, are portrayed in the top illustration 

 of the same page. 



In conjunction with the matured coralla of the two species of Turbinaria depicted 

 on the same and opposite pages, these photographic replicas might be suggestively 

 labelled " small beginnings and big endings." Four out of five of the nascent coralla 

 contained in the top illustration of page 233, represent the life-sized initial growth of 

 the relatively huge foliaceous coralla portrayed to a scale of about one-twentieth 

 immediately beneath it. There is, moreover, on the farther side of the group of three, 

 towards the left, a yet smaller corallum of the same species that measures only a 

 quarter of an inch across and contains but four polyp cells or calicles. Turbinaria 

 peltata, the massive mound-forming species protrayed in its matured condition on 

 the next page, is represented in the group of "small beginnings" by the single, 

 almost circular, disc with about twelve notably large cells or corallites. Some idea of 

 the aspect of a young corallum of Turbinaria peltata as it appears seen through the 

 water with its polyps expanded may be gained by a reference to the photograph from 

 life of an allied coral, a cespitose Dendrophyllia, D. axifuga, reproduced overleaf. The 

 corallum is necessarily under these conditions completely hid, the organism presenting 

 the aspect of a group of daisy-like sea anemones. As previously recorded and 

 figured in the author's volume on the "Great Barrier Reef," the corallum and polypes 

 of Turbinaria peltata are more usually of a light cream or whitey-brown hue, but 

 vary from this to a most delicate rose pink. 



