243 



weathered condition. In the case of two specimens which 

 reached me, aggregating about a foot square, the corallites 

 contained living polyps when taken from the sea. 



Until recent years little was known of the coral fauna 

 living in South Australian waters. J. Haime and Milne 

 Edwards in their "Histoire Naturelle des Coralliaires" (1857) 

 mention three species only — viz., Plesiastrcea urvillei, P. 

 peroni, and Homophpllia (Isophyllia) australis — but only 

 the last mentioned was directly referred to South Australian 

 waters. 



Fig. 2. — Sketch showing Plan of Corallum as seen from above. 



In 1878 the Rev. J. E. Tenison-Woods published a 

 paper in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New 

 South Wales on "The Extratropical Corals of Australia," 

 in which he was a.ble to add only one more recent species 

 to the South Australian fauna, viz., (Jylicia rubeola, speci- 

 mens of which had been forwarded to him by the late Pro- 

 fessor Tate, obtained at Port Adelaide. 



Our present greatly-enlarged acquaintance with this in- 

 teresting group is entirely due to the zealous efforts of the 

 President of this Society (Dr. Verco), whose dr edgings 

 around our coast have brought to light many rarities of 

 marine life. The work of elucidating the coral fauna ob- 

 tained by Dr. Verco was undertaken by Mr. J. Dennant, 

 of Melbourne, and was incomplete at the time of his much- 

 regretted death in 1907. 



Mr. Dennant published two papers on the subject, in 

 ■which 22 species of South Australian recent corals are dealt 



