VI. 

 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 con- 

 tact with the air. 



" Sic et curalium, quo primum contigit auras 

 Tempore durescit : mollis fuit herba sub undis," 



says Ovid (Me tarn, 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 



