104: "MANY ISLES AND STRANGE PLACES" 



fully), went straight to its doom in a clump of coral, 

 when it might have betaken itself to the open sea 

 beyond our reach. Another fish most exquisitely 

 fashioned for a life among reefs is the rock-perch 

 i^Pterois volitans), with its body branded and mottled 

 like an encrusted rock, and its long fin-rays bedecked 

 with streaming filaments that sway and wave like 

 fronds of seaweed : it can change colour, too, like a 

 chameleon, and though its ordinary hues are ever- 

 varying shades of brown and red, yet one that crept 

 away from me into a deep blue pool became all blue 

 in alternate darker and lighter cross-bands. 



Sticking on every rock here you will see a number 

 of little hemispherical sponges, and when you pick one 

 off, you will find beneath it, like a limpet in its shell, 

 a small crab {Cryptodromia pileifera) : most of the 

 members of the family to which it belongs have the 

 same habit of sheltering themselves under some other 

 small animal. Lurking in every pool you will find the 

 stealthy swimming-crab {Thalamita cre7iata\ which — 

 until you touch it and it darts away like a fish — you 

 might easily mistake for a marbled stone. Then 

 again, there are several species of shrimps that live 

 among the tentacles of a gigantic, blue-spotted sea- 

 anemone, and, like it, are spotted and banded with 

 blue, so as to be invisible as long as they keep to its 

 shelter. 



Although, no doubt, the theory has at times been 



