Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/80

52 Then those coral gardens! Here are islets all of one form and colour; here others, or great fields of variegated colours and forms—pale grey, brown, pink,red, blue, turquoise, green, and yellow! Sometimes the animal retreating into its home leaves the tips of its coral cell white; but all these living corals are something very different from the dead, white-bleached things we see in our museums.

Great fish are in these waters, too, and they are the haunt of the dugong (Halicore Australis), that creature which, though no relation, somewhat resembles a seal. They go in herds, are devoted to their mates and their young, and the mother tucks her babe to her breast with her fin. The dugong may be more porpoise-like than, seal-like as its skin smooth. Besides the fore-flippers it has atrophied hind ones—no dorsal fin. The head has a rounded muzzle, and the male has projecting tusks. The females are more numerous and raise their heads erect out of the water when nursing their babies, and have been taken for mermaids! They are from eight to ten or twelve feet a herd contains from half a dozen to thirty or forty. In prehistoric times there was a creature of this sort twenty-five feet long. The natives go out in their canoes on moonlight nights and catch them with a sort of harpoon dart at the end of a long spear. The bêche-de-mer is in abundance and is of all sizes, from six inches long to three or four feet long; here it sometimes fetches £150 a ton, or more. There is also the horrible Synanceia horrida, or stone fish, also called the sea-devil. It is an atrocious-looking thing, covered with wart-like protuberances, and a row of spikes along its spines. The spikes and its horrible grey lumps emit a fluid poison when it is touched, and this poison is said to produce death. The Chines, however, esteem it a delicacy for the table;