400 CORAL AND CORAL REEFS 



carried to a very great distance from its parent ; and having 

 been so carried it loses these organs by which it is propelled, 

 and settles down upon the bottom of the sea and grows up 

 again into the form and condition of its parents. So that 

 if you suppose a single polype of this kind settled upon the 

 bottom of the sea, it may by these various methods that 

 is to say, by cutting itself in two, which we call " fission," or 

 by budding ; or by sending out these swimming embryos, 

 multiply itself to an enormous extent, and give rise to 

 thousands, or millions, of progeny in a comparatively short 

 time ; and these thousands, or millions, of progeny may 

 cover a very large surface of the sea bottom ; in fact, you 

 will readily perceive that, give them time, and there is no 

 limit to the surface which they may cover. 



Having understood thus far the general nature of these 

 polypes, which are the fabricators both of the red and white 

 coral, let us consider a little more particularly how the 

 skeletons of the red coral and of the white coral are formed. 

 The red coral polype perches upon the sea bottom, it then 

 grows up into a sort of stem, and out of that stem there grow 

 branches, each of which has its own polypes ; and thus 

 you have a kind of tree formed, every branch of the tree 

 terminated by its polype. It is a tree, but at the end of the 

 branches there are open mouths of polypes instead of flowers. 

 Thus there is a commton soft body connecting the whole, and 

 as it grows up the soft body deposits in its interior a quantity 

 of carbonate of lime, which acquires a beautiful red or flesh 

 colour, and forms a kind of stem running through the whole, 

 and it is that stem which is the red coral. The red coral 

 grows principally at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, 

 at very great depths, and the coral fishers, who are very 

 adventurous seamen, take their drag nets, of a peculiar kind, 

 roughly made, but efficient for their purpose, and drag them 

 along the bottom of the sea to catch the branches of the red 

 coral, which become entangled and are thus brought up to 

 the surface. They are then allowed to putrefy, in order to 

 get rid of the animal matter, and the red coral is the skeleton 

 that is left. 



In the case of the white coral, the skeleton is more 

 complete. In the red coral, the skeleton belongs to the 

 whole ; in the white coral there is a special skeleton for 

 every one of these polypes in addition to that for the whole 

 body. There is a skeleton formed in the body of each of 

 them, like a cup divided by a number of radiating partitions 



