ASPECT OF CORAL-BEDS. 465 



which is not correct. The mantle of this species is of a dull, 

 dirty pinkish white, covered with large irregular shaped, 

 reddish-brown blotches, distributed in no regular order ; 

 the siphon is marbled with the same colour, but of a 

 lighter shade; the tentacles are dull pinkish- white. 

 Living Eburna are very common in the China sea. They 

 generally live in a muddy botton, and in about fourteen 

 fathoms of water. The Chinese fishermen along the coast 

 frequently bring them up in their nets, together with 

 Dorippe, Dromia, and other Crustaceans; and I have seen 

 them carefully set apart in the stern of their craft, as if 

 for the purpose of being eaten. 



Among the islands of the Korean Archipelago, the 

 coral-beds are very splendid, and appear, as you look 

 down upon them, through the clear, transparent, water, 

 to form beautiful flower-gardens of marine plants. The 

 polypi which protrude their hydra-forms, are coloured 

 green, blue, violet, and yellow, which gives the corals a 

 very different appearance to the dry, calcareous masses 

 seen in museums, and calls to mind the exclamation of 

 St. Pierre: "Nos livres sur la nature n'en sont que le 

 roman, et nos cabinets que le tombeau." Indeed few 

 sights of nature can exceed, in beauty and interest, these 

 submarine parterres, where, amid the protean forms of 

 the branched corals, huge madrepores, brain-shaped, flat, 

 or headed like gigantic mushrooms, are interspersed with 

 sponges of the deepest red, and huge asterias of the richest 

 blue. But as Spencer very properly observes, 



"Much more eath to tell the stars on hy, 

 Albe they endless seeme in estimation, 

 Than to recount the seas posterity : 

 So fertile be the floods in generation, 

 So huge their numbers, and so numberless their nation." 

 VOL. II. 2 H 



