Photo by W. Saville-Kent, F.Z.S.] [Milford-on-Sea.
PART OF THE GREAT BARRIER REEF OF AUSTRALIA.
Chiefly composed of star-corals, many of them resembling human skulls. The Great Barrier Reef of Australia, consisting of innumerable detached reefs and coral-islets, is over 1,500 miles in length.
Some thirty odd species of sea-anemones are indigenous to British waters, and one or more of these will be familiar to most readers. The Strawberry-anemone, clinging to the rocks as a hemispherical lump of crimson, green, brown, or red and yellow speckled jelly when the tide is down, and expanding like a beautiful flower when the waters flow back upon it, is the commonest and in many respects the most beautiful of all, the circlet of turquoise beads, regarded as rudimentary eyes, developed around the outer margin of the tentacles, adding a charm possessed by few other species. The Dahlia-anemone, whose expanded disk and innumerable petal-like tentacles may measure as much as 6 or 8 inches in diameter, is the largest British species. These dimensions are, however, vastly exceeded by its tropical allies. The Australian coast produces giant species which may measure no less than from 18 inches to 2 feet across their expanded disks. These giant anemones are further interesting on account of the circumstance 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 properties. 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.
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.
Photo by W. Saville-Kent, F.Z.S.] [Milford-on-Sea.