{165}In an Australian Fish (_Plectropoma richardsoni_) the prevalent ground colour of the body is a brilliant carmine, with a tendency to yellow beneath, and diversified on the back and sides with ultramarine spots of almost sapphire-like intensity.[122] Certain Australian species of _Beryx_ (_B. affinis_ and _B. mülleri_)[123] have a similar ground-colour when freshly caught, but with various opalescent tints, chiefly blue and lilac reflections. In _Polynemus vereker_[124] the ground colour is chrome yellow, with darker markings, the pectoral and caudal fins are bright orange, the remaining fins being a lighter shade of the same tint, and by contrast the long free filaments of the pectoral fins are a bright vermilion red. The Velvet-Fish (_Holoxenus cutaneus_), also a denizen of Australian seas, has a dominant colour of brilliant scarlet vermilion, or a mixture of vermilion and orange. The skin has no scales and presents a singular pilose or velvety appearance.[125] It is, however, in some of the Pacific Trigger-Fishes (e.g. _Monacanthus_) and Coffer-Fishes (species of _Ostracion_) that the eccentricities of coloration are perhaps most strikingly manifest, for not only are the prevailing colours of the most brilliant description, but the presence of differently coloured bands or stripes, often arranged in complex patterns, adds greatly to the gorgeous and singularly bizarre appearance of these Fishes. To quote one illustration, the male of the Tasmanian Coffer-Fish (_Ostracion ornatus_)[126] has the back and sides of its body grass-green and its belly pale lemon: the caudal fin is orange-yellow, and the remaining fins a neutral transparent tint. The sides of the trunk and head are traversed by broad, irregular, and somewhat interrupted bands of the most brilliant ultramarine blue, the edges of which are sharply defined by dark chocolate-brown lines. Two or three of the blue body-bands are continued on to the caudal fin, where they curl into characteristic loop-like patterns. The lemon-yellow of the belly is further variegated by a reticulated pattern in pale blue. In the female, formerly regarded as a distinct species, the ground colour is not green but a pale pinkish-grey, or dove-colour, with local flushes of a more decided pink, and the belly is a pure yellow. The blue stripes of the male are represented in the female by comparatively unbroken bands of a rich reddish-brown which, at the bases of the pectoral and dorsal fins, {166}form an irregular spiral pattern. In both sexes the pattern of the longitudinal bands is never precisely the same in any two individuals. Scarcely less brilliant is the coloration of those Teleosts, notably species of Pomacentridae and Chaetodontidae, which frequent the coral reefs of the East Indian Archipelago and the Pacific and feed on the coral polypes, and of many of the Wrasses (Labridae). Many other groups, such, for example, as the Percidae, Cirrhitinae, and the