NARRATIVE OF THE CRUISE. 
565 
and an Astrcea, form huge masses, often as much as 5 feet in diameter, which have their 
bases attached to the bare basaltic rock of the shore. The tops of all of these coral 
masses are dead, and flat and somewhat decayed. ; but on these dead tops fresh growth 
is taking place, showing that slight oscillations in the level of the shore of a foot at 
least have taken place recently. Such slight oscillations are to be expected at the base 
of an active volcano. The tops of the corals have been certainly killed by being left 
exposed above water, and the present growth is due to the corals being now again sub- 
merged. The fact that these corals are to be seen growing on the bare rock itself, and 
not on debris of older corals, shows that the coral growth is very recent. The Brain 
Coral grows in convex, mostly hemispherical, masses, the Astrcea more in the form of 
vertically standing cylindrical masses, or masses which may be described as made up of a 
number of fused cylinders. The masses of the Astrcea are usually higher than those of 
the Mceandrina by about a foot, because they are able to grow in shallower water, and 
they thus range also higher up on the beach. Many of the masses of this Astrcea in the 
shallower water are left dry at each low tide, and appear to suffer no more in consequence 
than do the common sea anemones of our English coasts, which are so closely allied to 
them. There seem to be but few instances of species of Madreporarian corals which thus 
grow where they are exposed at low tide. The Brain Coral apparently cannot survive 
exposure, and hqnce the tops of its masses have been killed during the change of depth of 
the water at about a foot below the height at which those of the Astrcea have perished. 
The common Mushroom Coral ( Fungia sp.), so often to be seen as a. chimney-piece 
ornament in England, is most extraordinarily abundant on the shore, at a depth of 1 or 2 
feet at low water, and with it an allied larger, similarly free-growing Coral ( Herpetolitlia 
Umax, Esch.). The Mushroom Corals cover the bottom in places in such large quantities 
that a cart-load of them might be picked up in a very short time ; nowhere else were they 
seen so common during the voyage. A Beef Coral ( Pliysogyra aperta ) was found, which 
has been made the type of a new genus. 1 
Many visits were paid to the nutmeg plantations. The nutmeg is the kernel of 
a fruit very like a peach in appearance, which makes an excellent sweetmeat when 
preserved in sugar. The owner of a plantation, a very wealthy Malay native of 
Banda, said that about one male tree to every fifty females was planted on the estate ; 
he had a superstition that if a nutmeg seed were planted with its flatter side upper- 
most, it would be more likely to produce a male seedling. Formerly, before the 
Dutch Government renounced its monopoly of the growth of nutmegs in the Moluccas, 
the trees were strictly and most jealously confined to the island of Great Banda. The 
utmost care was taken that no seeds fit for germination should be carried away from the 
island, for fear of rival plantations being formed elsewhere ; seeds were, however, often 
smuggled out. The Government destroyed the nutmeg trees on all the other islands of 
1 Quelch, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 5, vol. xiii. p. 293, 1884. 
