l*eluctance to commence, and were awed into silence, knowing 

 that we could make but a faint picture of the corals as they 

 appear to the eye, or give satisfactory expression to the moody 

 speculations which they naturally suggest to an inquiring mind. 



The coral was formerly believed to belor»g to the vegetable 

 kingdom, but naturalists have for some time agreed that it is one 

 of the lowest forms of animal life. To those whom " proud science 

 never taught to stray," it appears, upon casual inspection, to be 

 in some of its forms nothing ])ut a curious and beautiful kind of 

 limestone, and in others a marine vegetable having such a stony 

 habit of growth as closely to ally it to the inanimate rock upon 

 which it builds, and to which it is securely attached and appar- 

 ently rooted. It belongs to the large family of coralligeroKS 

 zoophytes, and is found not only in tiie Bahama waters, but off 

 the coast of Florida, around the Bermuda and West India islands, 

 Madagascar and Mauritius, off the coast of Zanzibar, in the Per- 

 sian Gulf, in the Red and the Mediterranean Seas, and in the 

 Indian and Pacific oceans; but, as it canuot live and work except 

 in Avater of the temperature of not less than G8° of Fahrenheit, it 

 is only found within a belt of ocean thirty-six hundred miles 

 wide, through wliich the line of the equator runs. In colder 

 latitudes, and off the western coast of South America and Africa, 

 it is not found. Some of its reefs are over a tliousand miles 

 long. 



The most important of the coral-making animals are the Polyps, 

 which in external form and delicacy of coloring Prof. Dana com- 

 pares to the garden aster. Both have a central disc, fringed 

 with petal-like organs called tenacles. Below the disk the coral 

 polyp has a stout cylindrical pedicel or body which contains the 

 stomach and internal cavity of the polyp. The mouth is in the 

 center of the disk. The coral animal is very domestic, from ne- 

 cessity, being as it were, ** tied to its own door-post. " Like a tree 



