AN INTERESTING DISCOVERY. 65 



from beneath the water. When our flat-bottomed boat 

 was so loaded that it looked like a Thames barge laden 

 with hay, we used to row or swim with it ashore, and there 

 sort out our treasures on the sandy beach and stow them 

 away in bottles. 



Among the innumerable crevices and holes in these 

 pieces of coral rock, or embedded in masses of an encrust- 

 ing kind of sponge of a bright vermilion colour, we found 

 myriads of small crustaceans, molluscs, worms (marine), 

 serpulae, young star-fishes, and even young fish. Most 

 of the animals living in this sponge were protectively 

 coloured, simulating the bright red of the sponge itself. 

 A prawn (Alpheus) which we found in a coral block fished 

 up from the bottom, two miles out from the south side of 

 Swan Island, is peculiar in possessing symmetrical claws, 

 and in having the eyes covered with a sort of hood. 



The rocky pools on the beach, where we sorted our 

 catches, swarmed with small and very pretty gasteropod 

 shells, each of which was inhabited by a hermit crab 

 (Glihinarius) . Another crab — ^the mole-crab — [Remipes 

 scutillatus) was rather common on the sandy beaches 

 round Swan Island. You can see them being swept up 

 the slope by an advancing wave, and then as the water 

 retires, they burrow and hide themselves in the sand with 

 almost the rapidity of thought. In collecting a few 

 specimens we had to follow up the retiring wave and 

 burrow after them as quickly as a fox-terrier ; otherwise, 

 by the time the next wave had swept over their hiding- 

 place all trace of it would have been lost, except for a 

 minute breathing hole. 



But, I fear, we added absolutely nothing, during these 

 dilletante visits to the reefs, to the vast amount of know- 

 ledge already accumulated by zoologists in these directions ; 

 but as we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and certainly 

 added to our own little store, there was some little satis- 

 faction in the thought. 



Among the multitudes of tiny, but gorgeously-marked 

 fish, however, which lived down below among the 



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