362 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
its tropical allies. The Australian coast produces giant 
species which may measure no less than from i8 inches 
to 2 feet across their expanded disks. These giant 
anemones are further interesting on account of the cir- 
cumstance that they are self-constituted “ harbours of 
refuge ” to sundry species of fishes and crabs, which 
nestle among their tentacles like birds in a leafy bower. 
The anemones are themselves bright in colour, but the 
associated fishes are even more so. In an example which 
was photographed by the writer on the Western Australian 
coast, the anemone was olive-green, with the tips of the 
tentacles bright mauve. The fishes, of which three examples 
were present, were brilliant orange-scarlet with white 
bands. In addition to the fishes a small flat-clawed crab 
shared the sheltering hospitality of the anemone. Some 
of the tropical coral-reef-frequenting anemones, which have 
their tentacles beautifully branched, must be cautiously 
handled, in consequence of their notable stinging proper- 
ties. All sea- anemones and corals are, in fact, provided 
with peculiar stinging-cells, with which they benumb and 
thus make an easy capture of the living organisms on 
which they prey. While the majority of the sea-anemones 
live single or individually separate lives, there are some 
which form aggregations or colony-stocks of numerous 
units. These compound growths are brought about by 
repeated budding, or the sub-division or fission, without 
complete separation, of an originally single individual. It 
is by a similar process of recurrent sub-division that the 
wonderful fabrications of the coral-polyps are built up. 
An ordinary coral-animal or polyp, as previously 
PORTION OF A STAG’S- 
HORN CORAL 
Each minute circular cell represents the situation 
in life of a small sea-anemone-like 
animal^ or coral-polyp 
Stated, differs in no respect 
from a sea-anemone, except- 
ing for the possession of a 
calcareous skeleton secreted 
within its basal tissues, includ- 
ing portions of the mem- 
branous radiating partitions. 
Some coral-animals, like the 
majority of the Anemones, are 
solitary, and form single attached 
or loosely lying corals. The well- 
known Mushroom-coral is one 
of the latter. One species 
observed, which was photo- 
graphed through the water by the 
writer as it lay expanded in a 
tide-pool on the Australian Great 
Barrier Reef, might easily be 
Fhoto by W', SavUle^Kent^ F.Z.S, 
A CLUMP OF STAG’S-HORN CORAL 
The life-colours of this coral are a delicate cream ’with brilliant magenta tips 
