ADAPTATIONS IN CORALS. 59 



present fear of sharks, which, indeed, very seldom come 

 into such clear and shallow water. This is the barracuda 

 (SphyrcBTia), a fish which bears a very close resemblance 

 to our pike, and which, when it attains to a weight of thirty 

 or forty pounds, is liable to make a rush for a swimmer's 

 legs. 



But despite drawbacks such as these, what a fascinating 

 new world it all wais to explore : for everywhere beneath 

 the translucent Avater was spread out a garden in which 

 was displayed, not the dead enaipty husks of coral 

 organisms, such as one sees in fusty museums, but the 

 real living thing itself ; not the pale colourless spirit- 

 sodden things in glass jars, which perforce have to do 

 duty for tropical specimens of fish in our national or 

 provincial collections, but the God-painted animate things 

 themselves ; not, in a word, the drab inert figments of life, 

 but the sentient soul of it in conscious harmony with all 

 around it. For just as it is only in the very forest itself 

 that one can properly appreciate the wonderful adapta- 

 tions in colour and form presented by its Hving inhabitants; 

 so, here only, can one begin to get a glimmering perception 

 of how each form of life observed, was adapted to its 

 surroundings and had made the most of them. 



The submerged masses of slowly rotting rock on which 

 we were trying to balance ourselves were, for instance, 

 carpeted here and there with thinly spread coral colonies 

 of Porites. They grew as (or rather took the outward 

 form of) thin sheets or nodular undulations of a greenish 

 yellow or mauve colour, and were smooth and slippery, 

 with a sort of mucoid secretion, so that the hand slipped 

 swiftly over their surface. It was not easy to distinguish 

 the individual polypes, which, now that the swell was 

 constantly surging over them, appeared to have with- 

 drawn themselves into their uniform fleshy carpet 

 (ccenosarc) ; but one could appreciate the use of this 

 slimy secretion, which allowed the water to pass over them 

 with the least possible friction and resistance. No other 

 form of coral could well have grown in such a position ; 



