There is a fish too, Pseudoscarus by name, which actually lives on coral! It is commonly taken by fishermen and is easily recognised by its gorgeous green, blue and pink colours, but particularly by its teeth, which are fused into two pairs of chisels, with which the surface of the coral, and with it its living matter, is browsed away. Cut open a specimen of this fish and you find its guts full of fragments of coral[48].
- Figs. 66 and 67. Two specimens of Porites.
- In 66 the flesh has been left on the coral and where it is broken it is seen that the dark coloured living matter penetrates the mass only to the bottoms of the coral cups. In this small piece the openings of 14 Lithodomus burrows are seen, and in four of them the lips of the shell are visible.
- In 67 the base of the still living coral is rotting away, being full of small holes formed by the sponge Clione and small boring worms.
- Fig. 68. An old piece of coral in which so much of the surface has rotted away that the numerous Lithodomus borings, of which only the small openings can be seen in living corals, are fully exposed. This in spite of partial protection by growth of encrusting stony seaweed as at the point marked a.
- Fig. 69. Section of a large shell, a material very much harder than any coral, yet bored in the same way by both mollusca and sponge.
- Fig. 70. The mollusc Pholas lying in its burrow in coral.
- Fig. 70 about natural size, the rest about half this.
- From specimens in the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology.
Plate XXXI
Fig. 68
Fig. 66
Fig. 67
