60 THE STORY OF LIFE IN THE SEAS. 



forms of life will be clustered together; while 

 further on the predominant features will be the 

 soft and slimy Sarcophytums, looking like large 

 green toad -stools, some lumps of Organ -pipe 

 Corals and a few colonies of the Blue-coral. 



On other coasts I have wandered for miles along 

 a reef mainly composed of endless tangles of Mad- 

 repores, with very little variation indeed in the 

 general form of the Corals, in the character of 

 the Sponges and Sea-weeds that grow with them, 

 in their colour or in any other detail. Anyone 

 reading the many accounts of Coral-reefs that 

 have been written by travellers, must be struck 

 with their inconsistency as regards many particu- 

 lars ; and in no one point are they more inconsist- 

 ent than in the description of the colours some 

 writing in glowing terms of the beauties of the 

 sea-gardens, and others complaining that their 

 charms have been grossly exaggerated. As a 

 matter of fact some reefs have a prevailing dull 

 green or brown tone, while others exhibit all the 

 colours of the rainbow in their more brilliant 

 shades and tints. Another cause of the discrep- 

 ancy is that some reefs can only rarely be ap- 

 proached in a small boat owing to the breakers 

 that dash over them ; whilst in the Tropical calms 

 a tiny canoe can with perfect safety be manoeuvred 

 over the reefs during nine months of the year. 

 From my own experience I can assert that it 

 would be difficult indeed to exaggerate the glori- 

 ous beauty of some of the reefs in the Malay 

 Archipelago, more particularly of those where 

 many different kinds of Corals may be seen in 

 close proximity to one another. On such a reef, 



