100 THE NAUTILUS. 



nails you call them, not a bad name either. I call this Acanthochites 

 and that Cryptoplax.'" As the conchologist crooks his finger round a 

 live Stomatella mariei, the creature falls asunder. Like a Gecko, he 

 would ransom his body with his tail. Gena does the same in Sydney 

 harbor ; Harpa is said to know the trick. 



"What are you doing?" asks Mr. Conglomerate, strolling up. 

 " Smashing up Heliopora? What a shame !" And so it is, to wreck 

 the beautiful blue branches, but we seek all manner of queer things 

 hidden in corners, and Gephyrean worms and Lithophaya burrowing 

 inside. A few odd urchins and star-fish are overhauled for Stylifer 

 without success. 



And see under the water what looks to the eye like a mass of 

 white down, but to the finger feels hard. We read the riddle with a 

 chop of the crow-bar ; the fragment shows tiny crimson rods packed 

 together, and partitioned off into floors and ceilings. It is a lump of 

 Tubipora musica in full bloom. 



Out in the broad daylight lie the Strombs, they love the little 

 sandy pools among the rocks. The sociable big Pterocera lie around 

 in scores, not too proud to foregather with their humble cousin S. 

 luhuanus. There is nothing shy about a Stromb, it vigorously resents 

 being picked up, and kicks like a Nassa, lashing out water with its 

 operculum, and thrusting out its beautiful big, green eyes, on their 

 long stalks, it stares boldly at its captor. 



But now the tide is rising fast. Soaked and tired and hungry we 

 must leave our hunting ground. Though bags and buckets and 

 tubes are crammed, yet we have scarcely tasted of the riches of the 

 reef. All to-morrow, next week, and next month we might collect 

 without exhausting it. 



Back to the cutter we row over fields of deeper corals, scarlet 

 gorgonias, parrot fish glancing blue and gold and green, Monacanthus 

 in armour of black and red, over madrepores ten feet across, like 

 tables spread with dainty lace and edged with violets. 



Then we climb aboard and snatching a hasty meal as we work, 

 face the only tiresome labor of the day, the labelling, sorting and 

 packing of our catch. 



At last the jars and kegs are screwed down. Let us pass the 

 pannikin along for rum, light a pipe, stretch luxuriously on the 

 hatch and lazily watch the ghostly gleam of the zodiacal light fading 

 in the west. 



