66 



C. HEDLEY. 



A hillside clothed with timber affords food and shelter to 

 numerous animals and plants, especially invertebrata and 

 cryptogams, all of which would vanish if the trees were 

 cut down. Similarly the Galeolaria reef shelters in its 

 nooks and crannies a whole fauna which would disappear 

 if the annelids were destroyed. Among the tubes there 

 hide a host of feeble folk, such as colonies of Lasaea aus- 

 tralis, a bivalve the size of a pea, Acmaea mufria, a tiny 

 limpet and Acanthocliitona retrojecta, a small chiton. In 

 a borrowed serpulid tube, Prof. Haswell discovered a queer 

 little crustacean, Eisothistos vermiformis, accommodated 

 to its narrow abode by the assumption of a worm-like 

 form. 1 



There are, densely crowded together, a series of larger 

 organisms, sessile, crawling and swimming which harbour 

 in the pools sheltered by the Galeolaria, From the gutter 

 shown in the photograph I drew out these two starfish from 

 a dark corner. Asterina calcar (fig. 32), a common species 



about four inches in dia- 



;:,■■■. 

 / \ 



IPIIiHi 



Fig. 32. Asterina calcar, a common 

 starfish. 



meter, has a cake-shaped 

 body with eight short blunt 

 rays. The disc is mottled 

 with various shades of 

 black, chocolate, orange, 

 green and purple. 2 Related 

 species which are also 

 common in this locality 

 are A. exigua with five 

 rays, and A. gunni with six. 



Contrasting with the neat and compact Asterina is the 

 limp sprawling Coscinasterina calamaria 3 (fig. 33). This 



1 Haswell, Proc. Linn, Soc. N.8. Wales, ix, 1885, p. 676, pi. 36, 37. 



2 Kent, Naturalist in Australia, 1897, p. 243, pi. viii, figs. 1-6. 



3 H. L. Clark, Mem. Austr. Mus., iv, 1909, p. 531. 



