258 KEELING ISLAND. 



disagreeable smell. The stinging pi-operty seems 

 to vary in different specimens. When a piece was 

 pressed or rubbed on the tender skin of the face 

 or arm, a pricking sensation was usually caused, 

 which came on after the interval of a second, and 

 lasted only for a few minutes. One day, however, 

 by merely touching my face with one of the branch- 

 es, pain was instantaneously caused ; it increased, 

 as usual, after a few seconds, and remaining sharp 

 for some minutes, was perceptible for half an horn- 

 afterwards. The sensation was as bad as that from 

 a nettle, but more like that caused by the Physalia, 

 or Portuguese man-of-war. Little red spots were 

 produced on the tender skin of the arm, which ap- 

 peared as if they would have formed watery pus- 

 tules, but did not. M. Quoy mentions this case of 

 the Millepora, and I have heard of stinging corals 

 in the West Indies. Many marine animals seem 

 to have this power of stinging : besides the Portu- 

 guese man-of-war, many jelly-fish, and the Aplysia, 

 or sea-slug of the Cape de Verd Islands, it is sta- 

 ted in the voyage of the Astrolabe that an Actinia, 

 or sea-anemone, as well as a flexible coralline al- 

 lied to Sertularia, both possess this ineans of of- 

 fence or defence. In the East Indian sea a sting- 

 ing sea-weed is said to be found. 



Two species offish, of the genus Scarus, which 

 are common here, exclusively feed on coral : both 

 are coloured of a splendid bluish-green, one living 

 invariably in the lagoon, and the other amongst the 

 outer breakers. Mr. Liesk assured us that he had 

 repeatedly seen whole shoals grazing with their 

 strong bony jaws on the tops of the coral branch- 

 es. I opened the intestines of several, and found 

 them distended with yellowish, calcareous, sandy 

 mud. The slimy, disgusting Holuthurias (allied to 

 our star-fish), which the Chinese gourmands are so 



