162 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



water falls a comparatively easy prey, for on being hustled 

 it soon loses heart and endeavours to hide its head, ostrich- 

 like, when it is easily captured. None unacquainted with 

 the skill with which the creature can spar with its flippers, and 

 the effectiveness of these flippers, when used as weapons of 

 defence, should venture to grip a turtle in its natural element. 

 Another species, stated to have a circumscribed habitat, 

 has a steep dome-shaped back, resembling at a casual 

 glance a seamless metal casting, with the edges abruptly 

 turned up. The head is large, the eyes deeply embedded 

 in their sockets, and the animal has the power of protruding 

 and withdrawing the head much more extensively developed 

 than usual. The " death's-head " staring from beneath the 

 dome-shaped back gives to the animal a most gruesome 

 aspect. These details are supplied by the master of a 

 beche-de-mer schooner, to whom all the nooks and corners 

 of the Great Barrier Reef and of the other Coral Sea 

 beyond, from New Guinea to New Caledonia, are familiar. 

 He says that the species, as far as his observation goes, is 

 confined to the neighbourhood of one group of islands. 

 To others this is known as the "bastard tortoiseshell." 

 The back is not actually seamless, but age causes the 

 plates to cohere so closely as to present that appearance. 



THE MERMAID OF TO-DAY 



Dugong (Halicore australis] still frequent these waters. 

 The rapacity of the blacks is a rapidly diminishing fa< tor in 

 their extermination, and the rushing to and fro of steamers, 

 which it was thought would scare away those which remain, 

 is becoming too familiar to be fearsome. Even in the narrow 

 limits of Hinchinbrook Channel, through which the passing 

 of steamers is of everyday occurrence, they still exist, though 

 not in such numbers as in the early days. It would seem 

 that the waters within the Great Barrier Reef may long 

 continue one of the last resorts of this strange, uncouth, 

 paradoxical mammal. 



