ON CORAL AND CORAL REEFS 



THE marine productions which are commonly 

 known by the names of "Corals" and "Corallines," 

 were thought by the ancients to be sea-weeds, which 

 had the singular property of becoming hard and solid, 

 when they were fished up from their native depths and 

 came into 'contact with the air. 



"Sic et curalium, quo primum contigit auras 

 Tempore durescit: mollis fuit herba sub undis," 



says Ovid (Metam. xv) ; and it was not until the seven- 

 teenth century that Boccone was emboldened, by per- 

 sonal experience of the facts, to declare that the holders 

 of this belief were no better than "idiots," who had 

 been misled by the softness of the outer coat of the 

 living red coral to imagine that it was soft all through. 

 Messer Boccone 's strong epithet is probably unde- 

 served, as the notion he controverts, in all likelihood, 

 arose merely from the misinterpretation of the strictly 

 true statement which any coral fisherman would make 

 to a curious inquirer; namely, that the outside coat of 

 the red coral is quite soft when it is taken out of the sea. 

 At any rate, he did good service by eliminating this 

 much error from the current notions about coral. But 

 the belief that corals are plants remained, not only in 

 the popular, but in the scientific mind ; and it received 

 what appeared to be a striking confirmation from the 

 researches of Marsigli in 1706. For this naturalist, 

 having the opportunity of observing freshly-taken red 

 coral, saw that its branches were beset with what 



