The general colour of living corals is very various, the snow white or creamy skeletons seen in museums being covered by a tinted film of polyps. The majority of species are some shade of brown, from deep chocolate to the golden colour of some seaweed covered boulders on home shores, but among these bright tints are abundant. The brown branches of _Madrepora_ are generally tipped with light violet, pink or white, as though each ended in a flower, while other branched corals are a brilliant scarlet or bright green all over. Another forms a series of large thin sheets, spreading horizontally one above another, and all of a brilliant yellow! In these the flesh is inconspicuous, appearing as a mere colouring of the stony branches, but in others the polyps are as conspicuous as “sea-anemones,” with typical flower-like discs, a row of tentacles surrounding the mouth, or the tentacles may be so long that nothing else is visible. One of these, _Galaxea_, is very beautiful, shades of bright or dark green mingling with a greater or less proportion of brown, so that the rounded knolls of coral may resemble hillocks of grass, or of brown seaweed. Another large coral is almost devoid of tentacles altogether, but the polyps are large and the stone is covered as it were with green brown velvet, laid down in soft folds. Of the inhabitants of these gardens and grottoes there is no space to speak. Anemones of all sizes and colours abound, and flower-like animals, the most beautiful of which are the sensitive sea-worms, add colour even to the corals. The gorgeous fish that lazily pass in and out, as though flaunting their beauty they could be careless of danger, have been described by every traveller. The association between certain smaller fish, crabs and other higher animals with corals is remarkable. One sees for instance a branched coral with a shoal of tiny green fish hovering near, or in another case the fish are banded vertically black and white. Drop a pebble among them and they instantly disappear among the branches, and if the coral is taken out of the water the fish still cling to their refuge, and most of them are captured with it. These are but two examples of a whole world of life found only among corals.