
A NATURALIST IN BRAZIL. 11 
corals. Millepores,* corals often. with flat, ragged-edged 
branches, like the antlers of an elk, and with very small 
pores like pin-holes, are not uncommon. 
In many localities south of the Abrolhos district, these 
corals grow quite abundantly, but I have no evidence that 
they ever form reefs or banks. Reef-building corals, ac- 
cording to the best authorities, flourish only at depths less 
than one hundred feet. They also require a warm temper- 
ature of the water. The great shelf of the Abrolhos lies 
over a very large area, at a depth of less than a hundred 
feet, and the conditions for the growth of corals are of the 
most favorable kind. In consequence of this, we find here 
not only around the islands, but in the shoal, open waters, 
very extensive reefs and banks, which, in an area of fifty 
miles square, occupy a space of nearly one hundred and fifty 
square miles. 
When the tide goes out, there is seen extending around 
about one half the island of Santa Barbara, as is shown in 
the illustration at the head of this article, a fringing reef of 
coral, out on which one may walk, as on a low wharf at high 
tide, and from its ragged edge look straight down dditough 
the limpid green water, and see the sides of the reef and 
the sea-bottom covered with huge whitish coral-heads, and 
a wealth of curious things not easily to be got at. 
The surface of the reef is quite flat, and rises but a short 
distance above low-water mark. It is rather irregular, and 
is overgrown with barnacles, shells, mussels, and serpula- 
tubes, and overspread with large slimy brownish patches, of 

smaller teeth below. Columella — developed, consisting of slender, loosely ar- 
ranged, contorted processes.—A. E 
*The most abundant species is ah eerre nitida Verrill. A very Gating —— 

Nica tens ecatidet clumps, four t diameter, 
forking, rounded, or somewhat gio tema Pparanens about Ato 8 inc ch in — 
e obtuse, rounded, or even clavate at 


the ends. The larger po ores are small, very ae round, pus scattered over the 
"e tya distances of about % to ‘lof an inch apart. The small pores are minute, 
ones, and often showing a téndency to arrange 
iha around them in circles of six or eight. The tissue is more compact and 
is—A. E.V. 

