A SEA FAN AND A SEA PARABLE. 125 
ranged about the central poimt, which is the 
mouth. 
“We are apt to regard such minute organ- 
isms as Insensible to surrounding conditions, 
and unable to communicate with each other 
even if they might be conscious of anything to 
communicate, but we find Nature clothes her 
‘feeble folk’ with mystery and endows them 
with faculties we can not understand; and 
if you were to injure or disturb one of the 
polyps m a piece of coral like this, quick 
as a flash would the danger be telegraphed 
to every member of the little colony, and 
you would see each tiny animal instantly 
curl back as if he had been the one who suf- 
fered. 
“An enormous traffic is carried on in the 
different varieties of coral, affording employ- 
ment for hundreds of vessels and thousands of 
fishermen, It is broken from the sea bottom 
by means of beams or irons attached to the 
boats used for that purpose, and brought up by 
grappling irons; divers also are employed in 
these coral fisheries. I once saw them in the 
Mediterranean gathering red coral (Corallium 
rubrum), the divers themselves looking like 
very unattractive mermen, or sea monsters, as 
they came up from the depths with the great 
