Featured on PDR in the collection Images from William Saville-Kent’s The Great Barrier Reef of Australia (1893)

While naming and arranging corals in the Natural History Department of the British Museum, William Saville-Kent daydreamed of seeing the beautiful grey organisms in front of him “in their native seas and wonderful living tints.” Years later he would realise his dream at the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland. There he conceived of a book that would be the first to extensively depict a coral reef in photographs — a selection of which are embedded at the bottom of this post.