MARINE MISCELLANEA. 231 
superimposed or coalescing lamelle measures a yard in height and from four to five 
feet in diameter. Greater elegance, with little inferior bulk, undoubtedly attaches 
itself to the finer specimens of Turbinaria conspicua depicted on page 233. The largest 
examples secured of this Turbinarian also measure as much as three feet in height 
and about four and a half feet in diameter, but, in place of forming more or less solid 
hemispheres, take the shape of bush-like masses of erect convoluted plates: or folia 
which may be isolated or united with one another in every conceivable fashion. The 
series of examples of this species contributed by the writer to the British Museum 
Collection numbered no less than twenty-four, and illustrate every phase of growth, 
from tiny cups, less than one inch across, to large bushes many feet in circumference. 
Several of the less advanced developmental phases are, as shown in the photograph 
reproduced, exhibited in the same table case. A series of small cups, which represent 
the initial growth phases of the two specific forms, Turbinaria conspicua and 
T. peltata, natural size, as gathered by the writer growing in close contiguity to one 
another on the reefs at Port Denison, Queensland, are portrayed in the top illustration 
of the same page. 
In conjunction with the matured coralla of the two species of Turbinaria depicted 
on the same and opposite pages, these photographic replicas might be suggestively 
labelled “small beginnings and big endings.” Four out of five of the nascent coralla 
contained in the top illustration of page 233, represent the life-sized initial growth of 
the relatively huge foliaceous coralla portrayed to a scale of about one-twentieth 
immediately beneath it. There is, moreover, on the farther side of the group of three, 
towards the left, a yet smaller corallum of the same species that measures only a 
quarter of an inch across and contains but four polyp cells or calicles. Turbinaria 
peltata, the massive mound-forming species protrayed in its matured condition on 
the next page, is represented in the group of “small beginnings” by the single, 
almost circular, disc with about twelve notably large cells or corallites. Some idea of 
the aspect of a young corallum of Turbinaria peltata as it appears seen through the 
water with its polyps expanded may be gained by a reference to the photograph from 
life of an allied coral, a cespitose Dendrophyllia, D. axifuga, reproduced overleaf. The 
corallum is necessarily under these conditions completely hid, the organism presenting 
the aspect of a group of daisy-like sea anemones. As previously recorded and 
figured in the author’s volume on the “Great Barrier Reef,” the corallum and polypes 
of Turbinaria peltata are more usually of a light cream or whitey-brown hue, but 
vary from this to a most delicate rose pink. 
