THE OUTER BEEF. 17 



or five feet of our keel, and show their cerebral convolutions 

 with the distinctness of cabinet specimens. But those of us 

 who are accustomed to the white corals of museum-shelves and 

 mantels see nothing of that description here. The internal 

 framework or skeleton is completely covered by the living 

 animal substance, a thin film of organic jelly of the most brill- 

 iant orange in this instance, from the surface of which protrude 

 the ever-busy polyps. To conceive that these huge blocks 

 everywhere scattered about, three, four and five feet in diameter, 

 should be the silent work of these tiny organisms ! But how 

 weak is the conception compared with that which recognizes in 

 the architecture of all the Bermudas principally the labors 

 of the coral animal ! 



Our launch is now fairly within the reef; we anchor, and 

 take to the whale-boat, determined to storm the little spot that 

 nature had bequeathed to the ocean wave. We toss gently 

 over the inflowing billows, and at first it would seem as though 

 our enterprise were to terminate in failure. But a moment 

 more, and success is achieved. The lee-side of one of the 

 massive outgrowths of millepore and serpula permits us to enter 

 safely into our little port, and, taking the necessary precautions 

 to land where the solidity of the marginal growth promised 

 security from a 'too sudden plunge into the sea, we disembark, 

 critics might say, in not very orthodox fashion. 



To those who have never seen a growing coral-reef it is 

 impossible to describe the magnificence of the scene. With rapt- 

 urous delight and wonder you gaze through the crystal waters, 

 and follow the infinitude of form and color that everywhere 

 surrounds you. The eye rests but for a moment on one object, 

 it is immediately called to another. Corals, sponges, squirts, 

 lime-secreting Algge (nullipores) are welded together into one 

 vast wilderness of coloring, a carpet mosaic of the most bizarre 

 pattern and brilliancy. All animal life is out in holiday 

 attire ; the crabs, the shells, the worms are painted with the 

 same brush and palette which were used in frescoing the corals 

 and sponges. Red, green, yellow, and purple blotches appear 



