422 NATURAL HISTORY OF ARABIA. 



them nine inches in diameter ; but there seemed to be nothing 

 peculiar in their habits or conformation. 



Coral Banks. — We have already spoken of those immense 

 masses of submarine rocks, formed by myriads of minute 

 creatures of the polypus kind, called Polypes a polypiers by 

 the French naturalists, which traverse and almost fill up the 

 Arabian Gulf. In some places they rise ten fathoms above 

 the surface of the water. Being soft, and easily wrought, 

 they are preferred to all other stones for the purpose of 

 building. Most of the houses in Tehama are constructed of 

 this material ; so that every cottage is a cabinet of natural 

 history. The island of Kameran is formed entirely of coral 

 rock, which rises without the slightest inquality of surface to 

 the height of twenty feet above the level of the sea. The 

 quantity of madrepores, millepores, algse, and other sub- 

 stances, which procured for that gulf the name of the Weedy 

 Sea, is immense. When rowing gently along in a calm day, 

 they appear to the eye much the same as in the time of Strabo 

 and Pliny, who described them as forests under water. Nor 

 is the comparison inapposite. Shaw remarks that several of 

 them were eight or ten feet high, growing sometimes pyra- 

 midal like the cypress ; at other times their branches spread 

 more open, resembling the oak ; while the entire bottom was 

 overlaid with a rich green carpet of creeping plants. At 

 low water, especially after strong tides or high winds, these 

 marine productions are cast ashore in great quantities. The 

 coralline bodies increase to an extraordinary size. Several 

 of them, such as the meandrina, or brainstone, are observed 

 to retain constantly a certain specific form ; while the astroite 

 madrepores have each their different asterisks or starlike fig- 

 ures impressed upon their surface. They assume the most 

 fantastic shapes, as m course of their increase they mould 

 themselves into the figures of rocks, shells, and other ob- 

 jects that lie within the reach of their growth. With respect 

 to the other inhabitants of the waters, it is sufficient to state 

 that both the Red Sea and especially the Arabian Gulf 

 swarm with species of Meduscz, Salpa, FistularioE, and other 

 kinds, which led Forskal to believe that the phosphorescence 

 of the seas was owing to the immense numbers of these 

 animals. 



THE ENP. 



