WHAT IS CORAL ? 467 



secret virtues ; the priests and soothsayers declared it was 

 agreeable to the gods ; and even at the present day some 

 of the Eastern nations are accustomed to deposit a few 

 grains of coral in the last resting-places of their dead to 

 keep them safe from the infernal genii. But it is more 

 particularly as an object of luxury that coral was, and is, 

 sought after. According to Pliny, the Hindus esteemed 

 it not less highly than the pearl ; and they still retain 

 the same partiality. The Gauls made use of it, as the 

 Asiatics do even now, to decorate their swords and 

 helmets. Everywhere women valued it for the pur- 

 poses of personal ornament ; and this may j ustly be said 

 of it, that it harmonizes as well with the ebony black 

 of the Ethiopian as with the dazzling fairness of the 

 Circassian. 



But now we come to the all- important question, What 

 is coral 1 



We reply, a calcareous secretion or deposit of many 

 kinds of zoophytes, belonging to the class Actinozoa. 



These zoophytes are compound animals, which reproduce 

 their kind by a process known as "germination:" that is, 

 as buds spring from a plant, so do young coral-buds spring 

 from the parent animal ; sometimes, on any part of its 

 surface ; sometimes, only from its base, or from its upper 

 circumference. They continue always in the same spot, 

 even when the parent polype has perished, and they in 

 their turn are throwing off fresh buds. While the zoo- 

 phyte is still a simple polype, the process of calcareous 

 deposition commences. It attaches itself to a rock or 

 some other substance, and here its deposit agglutinates, 

 and generation after generation enlarges the structure 



