202 TOILERS IN THE SEA. 



selves, producing a colony, of which the members 

 remain grouped. 1 



A far more extended and explicit account is 

 given of the results of M. Lacaze-Duthiers' re- 

 searches, by the Editor, in Popular Science Review 

 (1865), but the foregoing is sufficient for our pre- 

 sent purpose. The article in question may be 

 consulted by those who desire to investigate the 

 subject further. A section of the coral axis, or 

 corallum, the red coral of commerce, may be cut 

 and reduced to thinness, sufficient for examina- 

 tion by the microscope, when it will be perceived 

 that "the central portion of the stem is occupied 

 by a homogeneous coloured mass, of mineral char- 

 acter, round which there appears to be a ribbon- 

 like fold of more highly tinted matter, which does 

 not form a circle, but some irregularly oval figure; 

 between this and the circumference one sees 

 alternate concentric rings of strongly and faintly 

 tinted material, which are divided by numerous 

 radiating dark lines of extreme tenuity. These 

 various appearances may be thus accounted for : 

 the central, irregularly folded, ribbon-like mass is 

 the first hard part developed by the young egg- 

 polyp ; this had the mineral matter deposited all 



1 M. Lacaze-Duthiers, "Histoire Naturelle du Corail," 

 Paris, 1864 ; and Moquin-Tandon, " Le Monde de la Mer." 



