116 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
of these animals, and their astonishing fecundity— 
namely, by the wonderful faculty they have of 
promptly regenerating, of multiplying in a short time 
their generations successively, and rapidly accumulat- 
ing; finally, by the total amount of reunion of the 
products of these numerous little animals. 
“ Moreover, it is a fact now well known and well 
established that the coralligenous polyps, namely, 
this great family of animals with coral stocks, such as 
the millepores, the madrepores, astraez, meandrine, 
etc., prepare ona great scale at the bottom of the 
sea, by a continual secretion of their bodies, and as 
the result of their enormous multiplication and their 
accumulated generations, the greatest part of the cal- 
careous matter which exists. The numerous coral 
stocks which these animals produce, and whose bulk 
and numbers perpetually increase, form in certain 
places islands of considerable extent, fill up extensive 
bays, gulfs, and roadsteads; in a word, close harbors, 
and entirely change the condition of coasts. 
“These enormous banks of madrepores and mille- 
pores, heaped upon each other, covered and inter- 
mingled with serpule, different kinds of oysters, 
patella, barnacles, and other shells fixed by their 
base, form irregular mountains of an almost limitless 
extent. 
‘But when, after the lapse of considerable time, the 
sea has left the places where these immense deposits 
are laid down, then the slow but combined alteration 
that these great masses undergo, left uncovered and 
exposed to the incessant action of the air, light, anda 
variable humidity, changes them gradually into fossils 
and destroys their membranous or gelatinous part, 
which is the readiest to decompose. This alteration, 
which the enormous masses of the corals in ques- 
tion continued to undergo, caused their structure to 
gradually disappear, and their great porosity un- 
ceasingly diminished the parts of these stony masses 
