74 THE OCEAN. 



tioned, is a distinct and independent animal; but 

 there are some which, while they possess a general 

 similarity in structure to these, exist only in aggre- 

 gated communities ; many individual Polypes being 

 clustered upon a somewhat solid body called a Po- 

 lypidom, which is, when alive, clothed with a fleshy 

 coat, believed to be capable of communicating and 

 receiving sensatfons to or from all the Polypes. 

 The teat- shaped bodies, familiarly called by the 

 fishermen Cow's-paps, when simple, and Dead-man's 

 toes, when branched, is a common example; the 

 Ahyonium digitatum of zoologists. It consists of 

 a leathery substance, capable of contraction, studded 

 with orifices, whence project little stars with eight 

 rays, which are the expanded tentacles of the small 

 Polypes that inhabit the hollows. Those beautiful 

 productions, the Corals, some of which I may have 

 occasion to notice hereafter, are also formed on the 

 same model. They have generally a more solid 

 stem, partaking of the nature of stone, and branch 

 out in imitation of shrubs. The stony or horny 

 centre is, however, clothed with gelatinous flesh, in 

 which, as in the former instance, hollows occur at 

 intervals, occupied hy minute star-shaped Polypes. 

 The warty white coral (Gorgonia verrucosa), not 

 uncommon with us, is of this structure, having a 

 stony skeleton; but in the beautiful Sea-fan (Y/. 

 flabellum), the skeleton shows more the texture of 

 bone, or perhaps of horn; it is black, but is clothed 

 with flesh of a yellow colour, or sometimes purple. 

 From the ramifications being very numerous, and 

 uniting with each other at short intervals, like the 



