POLYPI. CORALLIFERI. 409 



nor to be anything more than a support for the 

 various individuals, which move and act each with an 

 independent perception and will. It varies greatly 

 in texture, sometimes being fleshy or gristly, some- 

 times horny, and sometimes stony ; and also in form 

 and position, sometimes being a shapeless mass, some- 

 times a jointed internal skeleton, sometimes a branched 

 trunk, and sometimes a series of shelly tubes. The 

 Organ-pipe, (Tubipora* Musica,) often seen in cabi- 

 nets, is a beautiful example of this last form. It 

 consists of a number of tubes of a beautiful crimson 

 colour, arranged in nearly parallel rows, and united 

 at certain distances by transverse plates of the same 

 material, which divide the series into ranges or stories, 

 like the different floors of a house supported by many 

 pillars. From the mouth of each tube is seen, when 

 alive, a little Polype of a bright green hue, with 

 eight tentacles, whose flesh, as it grows, gradually 

 hardening,-)- forms the tube, and at regular intervals 

 expanding horizontally, forms the thin floor in con- 

 cert with its companions, each around its own tube ; 

 which being done, it again grows perpendicularly. 

 It is abundant in the Indian Ocean. 



The well-known and highly-prized Red Coral 

 (Corallium Rubrum) consists of a stony branching 

 stem, of extreme hardness, deposited by and covered 

 with a sort of bark of living flesh, bearing at intervals 



* Tula, a pipe, and porus, a pore. 



t " In these Polyparies, there is a real change of soft into solid 

 substance, which is effected gradually, but not deposited in layers."- 

 Jones's Anim. Kingd. p. 36. , 



VOL. II. T 



