216 TOILERS IN THE SEA. 



" It is," he says, " not more surprising, nor a matter 

 of more difficult comprehension, that a polyp should 

 form structures of stone (carbonate of lime), called 

 ; coral, than that the quadruped should form its bones, 

 or the mollusk its shell. The processes are similar, 

 and so is the result. In each case it is a simple 

 animal secretion, a secretion of stony matter from the 

 aliment which the animal receives, produced by the 

 parts of the animal fitted for this secreting process ; 

 and in each carbonate of lime is a constituent, or one 

 of the constituents, of the secretion. Coral is never, 

 therefore, the handiwork of the many-armed polyps ; 

 for it is no more the result of labour than bone- 

 making in ourselves. And again, it is not a collec- 

 tion of cells into which the coral animals may with- 

 draw for concealment, any more than the skeleton of 

 a dog is its house or cell ; for every part of the coral 

 of a polyp, in most reef-making species, is enclosed 

 within the polyp, where it was formed by the 

 secreting process." Great as may be our sin in 

 calling the coral animals either " coral architects " or 

 " coral builders," having thus limited the application 

 of these terms, we may have some hope of escape. 

 Furthermore, it is to be regretted that he should 

 have applied the canon of scientific criticism to a 

 poem with which he fails to find himself in sympathy, 

 because it is a poetical work, and not a scientific 

 treatise. " More error," he says, " in the same com- 



