SEA-ANEMONES. 295 



die or are sickly, so that the best way is either to 

 peel them gently off the rock they are attached to, 

 or else to chip off the rock fragment to which a 

 specimen is adhering, so as to bring both away. 



Fig. 226. 



The Beadlet. 

 (Actinia mesembryanthemum}. The Opelet (Anthea cereus). 



Corals differ from sea-anemones in having an in- 

 terior hard skeleton, formed of lime. This is part 

 and parcel of the animal, just as our bones are of our 

 own bodies. If our readers can imagine the radiated 

 walls seen in a cross-section of the interior of the 

 body of a common sea-anemone to have the power of 

 secreting lime, they will understand how the radiating 

 septa of corals are formed. When a coral zoophyte 

 is dead, the anemone-like flesh and tentacles which 

 covered it decompose, and thus there is left behind 

 the pretty, hard, whitish body we call " coral." The 

 red coral of commerce, so valued in jewellery, is a 

 tinted calcareous skeleton secreted by another group 

 of animals (not the true coral animal), which belongs 

 to the same class as the " sea-fans " (Gorgonidce). In 



