THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



JULY, 1872. 



COEALS AND COEAL AECHITECTUEE. 



By ELIAS LEWIS, Jr. 



THEEE are forests and gardens in the depths of the sea. Stately, 

 tree-like structures inextricably branched, and a multitudinous 

 shrubbery, delicate in form, and crowned with brilliant perennial blos- 

 soms, constitute a world of life and beauty in the obscurities of the 

 ocean, where the eye of man but rarely penetrates. 



But what kind of life is that which produces such wonderful 

 growths? The similarity of the appearances to a garden was too 

 striking not to suggest an answer, for what but vegetal forces can pro- 

 duce growing branches covered with flowers ? And so Theophrastus, 

 the old Greek botanist, described these sea-structures as of vegetal 

 origin, and this opinion prevailed for 2,000 years. It began at length 

 to be suspected that the old notion was wrong, and in 1*751 Peyssonnel 

 sent to the Eoyal Society an elaborate memoir, in which he maintained 

 that these ocean-forests are really formed by little animals. This, as 

 a matter of course, was indignantly disputed, and was pronounced by 

 the great Reaumur too absurd to be discussed. To ascribe to " poor, 

 little, helpless, jelly-like animals " the skill and power necessary to build 

 such stately and beautiful structures, looked like a wanton appeal to 

 human credulity, and the point was hence warmly controverted. Lin- 

 naeus, however, proposed a compromise. He would admit the animal, 

 but would not deny the vegetable He therefore assumed that these 

 little toilers of the sea were of an intermediate nature, and named them 

 zoophytes, animal-plants. But the coral-polype is now known to be 

 as truly an animal as a cat or a dog. The apparent flower is a little 

 sac-like creature, and the wreath of colored petals its arms or ten- 

 tacles. These are arranged around its circular mouth to seize and 

 draw in the food upon which it lives and grows, while the structures 

 which it produces are not perishable wood but enduring stone. 

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