424 HISTORV OF 



object, such as corallines, fiingi-madiepores, sponges, astroites, 

 and keratophytes. * Though these differ extremely in their out- 

 ward appearances, yet they are all formed in the same manner 

 by reptiles of various kinds and nature. When examined che- 



* The genus Madrepore consists of many species, of varied form, and 

 many of them most elegant in their structure. The animal resembles a 

 medusa; the coral has lamellate, star-shaped cavities. It is principally in 

 hot climates, betwixt the tropics, that they are in greatest abundance. 

 Few of them have been observed in any of the European seas, except the 

 Mediterranean. Many species are found in a fossil state. 



Tlie Truncated Madrepore. — It is curious to remark, in this species, the 

 poroliferous mode in which the new joints arise from the surfaces of the 

 already formed stars. 



The Cup Madrepore is clovate, and turbinated with a tapering base ; the 

 ■star is obconic, with a double prominent jagged centre. This coral is 

 dragged up in great abundance by the coral-fishers on the southern coast of 

 France and Italy : it is always found single, without branches, and gene- 

 rally adhering to a piece of red coral. It is of a white colour, and very hard. 

 The lamellae, or gills, are about forty in number, and as many intermediate 

 small ones ; the latter extend to the margin, but do not reach to the bot- 

 tom of the star, like the larger ones. The common, or middle size of this 

 coral, is about t«'0 inches long, and three quarters of an inch in diameter, 

 in the broadest part. 



The Mushroom Madrepore is orbicular and convex, with simple longitu. 

 dinal gills ; beneath, concave and papillous. This coral is met with in great 

 abundance in the Red Sea, and the East Indian ocean ; it is frequently found 

 of five or six inches diameter, and often of a milk-white colour. 



The genus Coralline consists of animals greatly resembling plants, and has 

 been thought by some writers to belong entirely to the vegetable kingdom, 

 and to diiFer but little from fucuses and confervas : but as Linnaeus observes, 

 that all calcarious substances are truly of animal production, therefore these 

 corallines, consisting of that substance, do belong to the animal kingdom. 



What or where the link is that unites the animal and vegetable kingdoms 

 of nature, no one has yet been able to point out : some of these corallines 

 appear to come the nearest to it of any other animal production ; but then 

 the calcarious covering, though ever so thin, shows us that they cannot be 

 vegetables. The white mealy substance on the surface of some of the 

 lichens would induce one to think them covered \vith a calcarious matter; 

 but chemistry shows us, it is no more of a calcarious nature than the mealy 

 whiteness of various auriculae. 



The minuteness of the pores of corallines, though as small as those of 

 some plants, is no proof of their being vegetables ; because there may be 

 suckers that come through these pores, which our glasses cannot discover ; 

 or perhaps they may be like the pores of sponges, contrived in such a man- 

 ner as to suck in and throw out the water. Let us observe the pores of 

 those corals called millepores, and we shall find them equally as small as 

 those of the corallines ; and yet these are imiversally allowed to be of the 

 animal kingdom. The characteristics of this genus are, that the animal 

 is growing iu the form of a plant ; the stem is fixed, with calcarious sub- 

 divided branches, for the most part jointed. 



