VOL. L.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 1 I 1 



tervention of the openings of the small tubes, or their ramifications, between the 

 sides of the larger ones, makes the latter appear more irregular, and not so pa- 

 rallel, as in the true red coral ; where we find fewer stars ; and where those 

 occur, we may observe it always alters the direction of the tubes. 



Many of the tubes of this coral appear through a magnifying glass full of holes, 

 like those he has described in the keratophyton (plate 26, fig. g, p. 62, of his 

 Essay on Corallines ;) and these holes appear more distinctly when we examine 

 the half tubes, or broken irregular ones, on the stem and great branches of this 

 coral. Further, if we compare the transverse section, at the base of this coral, 

 with a section of a common rattan cane, they will both appear full of holes in 

 the same regular order, and of nearly the same diameter: whereas the tubes on 

 the surface of the stem of this coral, look as irregular as so many holes pierced 

 or eaten out by worms. 



I hope, says Mr. E. by this time our ingenious botanical friends, whom we 

 could not persuade to part with these beautiful sea-productions from the vege- 

 table kingdom, are thoroughly convinced that this mealy, friable, or calcareous 

 covering, full of starry cells, which we are sure to find covering all the recent 

 red corals and keratophyta, is not a mere blight of insects common to the sea 

 vegetables as well as land ones, which they have formerly insisted on; but that 

 they will consider this covering, for the future, as proper and necessary for the 

 well-being of these little animals, as they do at present hair and wool for beasts, 

 feathers and down for birds, and scales and slime for fishes. 



On examining this coral in the microscope, it is observed that the outside tubes 

 of the stem are chiefly stony, but that the inner parts are composed of as many di- 

 visions of spongy tubes as there are of stony ones. This arises from the smaller 

 ramifications, which being spongy at the knobs, and stony in the spaces between 

 them, are inclosed and united together into one common mass during the growth 

 of this coral ; so that both the soft and hard parts together make up the inside 

 of its trunk or stem. When we examine minutely the two parts that compose 

 the branches, we find that the knobs consist of little sponge-like tubes inter- 

 woven together, as. they appear magnified at fig. d ; and the shank or part be- 

 tween the knobs is composed of stony tubes, that are more erect (see the piece 

 magnified at e :) these tubes appear to be branched from the lateral holes at ff. 

 The fig. E likewise shows the appearance of the tubes on the surface of the main 

 stem. The radiated openings in the little wart-like figures on the surface of the 

 branches are guarded by 8 pointed valves, as magnified at fig. i. these inclose 

 heads of the polype, one of which is figured at k. 



The stem of this specimen is so entirely divested of its yellow mealy covering, 

 that we may easily trace the manner in which the animals that compose it 

 have carried up their stony tubular cells, which lie side by side along the surface. 



