228 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
continually outflanked, and either retires sulkily to its basement apartments or altogether 
abandons the field of its repeated discomfiture to the triumphant polyps. This inter- 
pretation affords a logical explanation of the fact that the majority of the adult growths 
are untenanted by worms, and for the circumstance that it’ was not until an extensive 
colony, as here recorded, was available for investigation that the precise nature of this 
anomalous compound organisation, however shrewdly guessed at, could be absolutely 
determined. | 
The Coral fauna of the Australian seas, and more especially with relation to its 
redundant development on the Queensland coast, has been so fully dealt with in 
the authors previous volume, “The Great Barrier Reef of Australia,” that the 
extensive reference to this subject that might have otherwise been appropriately allocated 
to this Chapter would be scarcely justified. Considerable space has, moreover, been 
devoted to this very prominent marine zoological group in Chapter V., dealing with 
Houtman’s Abrolhos Islands. A conspicuous feature in that section was the attempted 
portrayal, in something of its natural tints, of one of the very characteristic coral 
growths in Pelsart Island Lagoon. As a counterfoil to that picture, the portraiture 
of an entirely distinct type of coral reef formation, with the corresponding reproduction 
of the life colours and environments of its component units, has been reproduced as 
the frontispiece to this volume. The particular scene depicted in this instance is an 
area of the tidally-exposed fringing reef in the vicinity of the Palm Islands, North 
Queensland. Several photographic views of corresponding and neighbouring reef areas 
are represented by Plates VI. and X. of the author's “ Barrier Reef” volume, but, neces- 
sarily under such circumstances, in simple monochrome. The attempt here made to por- 
tray such a reef scene with an approximation to its natural colouring and as sketched 
on the spot will suffice, if crude, to convey to those unfamiliar with such scenery 
a more realistic and natural aspect than can be imparted by an ordinary photograph. 
This individual reef scene having, as a matter of fact, been taken from a point 
closely adjacent to that of the photograph reproduced in Plate VI., No. 2, of the 
author’s above quoted volume, the context descriptive of that illustration is in the 
main applicable to the present one. The basis of the exposed reef-area in the fore- 
ground is in either case composed of a solid mass of a coral species referable to the 
genus Porites, which is remarkable for both the minute size of its component cells 
or calicles, and at the same time for the colossal dimensions to which the compound 
-masses or coralla may ultimately attain. The example here figured measures over 
thirty feet in diameter, and ten or twelve feet deep, but originated, it may be 
