518 DR. F. w. JONES ON GROWTH-FORMS [June 18, 



1. On the Growth-forms and supposed Species in Corals. 

 By Frederic Wood Jones, M.B., F.Z.S. 



[Received June 15, 1907.] 

 (Plates XXVII.-XXIX.* and Text-figures 145-161.) 



Before anyone engaged in the study of living creatures 

 attempts to classify or arrange his material, it is essential that 

 he should first observe, to the best of his ability, the life-jDrocesses 

 of those creatures the afiinities of which he would determine. 



The zoology that deals with living animals must handle its 

 material for study as living entities, it must observe the animals 

 in their natural surroundings, must see the widest possible extent 

 of their variation, and mark every influence of changing environ- 

 ment on the creature, before a cataloguing or an ordering of genera 

 and species is undertaken. There should be no studying of living 

 animals fi-om fragments, as though they were creatures long since 

 extinct. 



I think it is true to say, that of all classes of animals the 

 corals have suffered most injustice at the hands of zoologists, by 

 reason of their being studied as fragments, and far from the site 

 of their natural envii-onment. It is also true to say that the 

 collecting and describing of fragments of the vegetative growths 

 of corals can lead only to confusion, for the conditions of the 

 environment that produced the special characters of the fragment 

 must always be carefully inquired into. 



The coi'als constitute a chaotic collection of individuals, and the 

 uncertainty as to what may be considered as a species is the first 

 pi'oblem that must confront anyone who happens to study corals 

 from his own resources on an isolated coral-reef. A gradually 

 acquired familiarity with the actively growing corals in their 

 natural habitat produces a gradual change in the standpoint from 

 which a student would regard the limits of specific range ; and 

 a regular transition of ideas is undergone, from an early stage in 

 which the number of species is believed to be limitless, to a final 

 stage when the enormous vai'iation in response to environment is 

 recognised, and the actual species are known to be but few. 



I am convinced that the only real advance that is likely to be 

 made in the knowledge of a class of animals such as the I'eef- 

 corals, must be the outcome of actual observation on the living 

 colony ; and the entire aim of my fifteen months' residence on the 

 Oocos-Keeling atoll was the watching of the coral-growths in 

 the endless variations of their natural environment. 



I would urge that if these observations have but little scientific 

 vakie, yet they have this merit, that anyone without special 

 knowledge, but with a love of Nature, may extend and I'epeat 

 them ; and I believe that along these lines lies the interest of 



corals. 



* For explanation of the Plates, see p. 556. 



