SOME ANIMAL ARCHITECTS. 131 



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ing the nature and work of the coral-animals. As Professor 

 Dana remarks, Montgomery's "Pelican Island" contains 

 statements which a scientific man at least can hardly excuse 

 on the ground of poetical licence. " The poetry of this 

 excellent author,'' says Dana, " is good, but the facts nearly 

 all errors, if literature allows of such an incongruity. There 

 is no ' toil,' no ' skill,' no ' dwelling,' no ' sepulchre,' in the 

 coral-plantation, any more than in a flower garden ; and as 

 little are the coral-polypes shapeless worms that ' writhe and 

 shrink their tortuous bodies to grotesque dimensions.' " 

 The coral-animals, in short, manufacture or secrete the 

 coral-substance as a part of their life-action and nature, just 

 as a flower manufactures its colour, or as a higher animal 

 forms its bones. The living acts of the coral-animal include 

 the formation of coral as an essential and natural duty, and 

 not as a work of a merely accidental or occasional kind. 



It is noteworthy that the animal nature of coral was first 

 discovered only some hundred and fifty years ago. Such an 

 assertion may appear somewhat strange to the ordinary 

 reader, considering the universally 

 admitted animal nature of the 

 substance. But it must be re- 

 membered that the distinctions 

 between animals and plants have 

 only in comparatively late years 

 been duly investigated ; and the 

 habit of placing reliance upon ex- 

 ternal form and outward appear- 

 ance as a means of distinction, 

 certainly tended to place the 

 plant-like and rooted corals as 

 veritable plants before the eyes of 

 naturalists in past days. The ap- 

 pearance of a piece of red coral, 

 or of the nearly allied Isis or 

 "mare's-tail" coral, in its living state (Fig. 13), for example, is 

 decidedly plant-like. We see a branching structure, consisting 



FIG. 13. "Mare's-tail" coral : 

 (Jsis Iiipptiris.} 



