SEA-ANEMONES AND CORALS. 13 



And it passes from the stomach into the body, circulat- 

 ing through all the partitions and passing from them 

 into the tentacles ; for every one of the tentacles con- 

 nects with one of the spaces divided off by the parti- 

 tions. Thus you see the whole body is nourished by 

 whatever enters at the mouth. On the inner side of 

 the partitions, little eggs are formed, which hang there 

 till they are ready to be hatched, and then they pass 

 out through the mouth into the water, where they grow 

 into Sea- Anemones like the one of which we have been 

 talking. 



I hope that the Sea-Anemone has interested you so 

 much, that you will like to hear about some other 

 animals of the same kind, which live also in the sea, 

 and of which I have a strange and wonderful story 

 to tell you. Some of them are scarcely larger than 

 a pin's head, yet they have built up large islands, and 

 even considerable portions both of Europe and Am- 

 erica. These are the coral animals. They are very 

 rare on our northern coasts, and you cannot therefore 

 see them alive. Though -most of them are much smaller 

 than our Sea-Anemone, yet, as they are constructed on 

 a similar plan, what I have told you about his tentacles, 

 his partitions, his internal sac, his lasso-cells, may help 

 you to understand what I have to tell you of the coral 

 animals. With few exceptions, they do not live singly, 

 like the Sea-Anemone, whom we found all alone in his 

 puddle, but they grow together in clusters. Such 

 dusters, however, start from a single little animal ; it is 

 born free, a pear-shaped, transparent body, white and 

 jelly-like, swimming about in the water. (Nos. 8, 9.)* 



* The young, just hatched, of Pr rites, a Coral, found OB 



