120 
general sense of feeling, some of them have a series of 
eyes placed like a necklace around the body, just outsid2 
of the tentacles. They have crystalline lenses, anda short 
optic nerve. Yet Actiniz are not known to have a proper 
n2rvous system; their optic nerves, where they exist, are 
apparently isolated, and not connected with a nervous ring 
such as exists in the higher radiate animals.” Now, the 
“bourses marginales” have highly refractile cells and 
elongated cells without nematocysts associa‘ed with them ; 
then a mass of granular and opaque tissue separates them 
from some irregularly-shaped cells which are not peculiar 
to the spot, but which are found between the muscular 
layers also. Corresponding refractile cells are to be found 
on the tentacles. We ,have followed Schneider in these 
researches, and do not as yet feel disposed to recognise 
an optic organ. 
The classification of the corals employed by Dana is, as 
might have been expected, not that followed by those men 
who have raised thos2 Radiata from the Slough of Despond 
in which they were left by the predecessors of Lamarck. 
The introduction of American novelties, to the exclusion 
of well-recoznised European classifications, is neither right 
nor scientifically correct. For instance, Dana mentions 
the “ Oculina tribe, or Oculinacez,” and, after giving his 
differentiation, proceeds : -“ The Orbicella is an example 
of one of the massive Astraea-like forms constituting the 
Orbicel!a family, or Ocbicellidee, in the Oculinatribe. The 
Caryophyllia h2re figured (Caryophyliea Smithii, Stokes) is 
one of the solitary species of the tribe found in European 
seas and on the coast of Great Britain.” “ Thecorallum of 
an allied species (Caryophyllia cyathus),’ Dana proceeds 
to inform us, is found “ not only in the Mediterranean, but 
also over the bottom of the Atlantic, even as far north as 
the British Isles.” ‘“ Another example of this tribe, as de- 
fined by Pro®. Verrill, is the species of Astrangia occurring 
alive along the southern shores of New England, and on 
the west of New Jersey.” The diagnosis of the Oculina 
tribe was the growth of the experience of Schweigger, and 
of Milne-Edwardes, and Jules Haime, and they separated 
the incongruous genera which Lamarck had associated 
with it. The admission of Orbicella, which is really the 
old Astrea of Lamarck, and of Caryophyllia into this well- 
differeatiated tribe, is simply absurd, for they possess 
structural characters sufficiently diverse as to place them 
in different families. The discovery of Caryophyllia 
Smithii in the European seas was due to the investigations 
of the results of the late deep-sea dredgings of H.M.S. 
Porcupine, and those unrecognised workers have shown 
that it is not Caryophyllia cyathus, but C. clovus, which 
has the great horizontal range. Had Dana waited a little 
longer he would have had the opportunity of quoting cor- 
rectly. Again, Astrangia was well differentiated long 
before Prof. Verrill was heard of. The American Conrad, 
and our Lonsdale, and finally, the distinguished French 
Zoophytologists, for whose labours our author appears to 
have a supreme contempt, inasmuch as he rarely gives 
them credit for their good work, consolidated the genus, 
_which has nothing in common with the Oculinide. 
Interesting and valuable chapters on the distribution of 
corals according to temperature, and on their limitation to 
certain areas, follow. Darwin is supported in his views of 
the 20-fathom range of reef-building corals, and some 
interesting data are given respecting the rapidity of growth 
Att, CoE Seley ol Ge 
ri 7% se pee rc! a. 
‘Des i etroos 
NATURE 
of corals. A madrepore is stated to have grown 16 feet in 
64 years; but the rapidity of growth depends upon the ~ 
habit of the species, the freedom from the destructive © 
effects of boring mollusca, nibbling fish, and wave-breaking, — 
and is, under favourable conditions, very rapid. The — 
chapters on the structures 
little to the knowledge which Darwin and Jukes and 
Hochstetter have given us; but Dana’s great powers of | 
illustration enable him to reproduce the details with which — 
we are so familiar, thanks to these authors, in very en- - 
gaging forms. He tells us, however, that in the reef, f 
“ The coral doris and shells fill up the intervals between — 
the coral patches and the cavities among the living tufts, — 
and in this manner produce the reef deposit, and the bed 
is finally consoli lated while still beneath the water.” x! 
wave in smashing and removing masses of coral, and the ~ 
effects of the passage upwards on to the beach of hard 
blocks in destroying and comminuting smaller zoophytes, — 
Dana very properly insists upon the formation of what — 
are usually called coral islands, from the collection of — 
beached coral boulders, and suggests that the extreme — 
grinding and pounding of the most fragile coral stems 7 
places the carbonate of lime, of which they are com- — 
posed, in the best position for solution in highly aérated q 
sea water. 
about the reefs, and compares its origin to that of any — 
other kind of sand. and mud. 
shores exposed to the waves, coral or not coral, and in 
every case the gentler the prevailing movement of the ‘ 
water the finer the material on the shore. 
lagoons, where the water is only rippled by the winds or 
roughened for short intervals, the trituration is of the 
gentlest kind possible, and moreover the finely pulverised q 
material remains as part of the shores.” He shows that 3 
the particles of the very fine mud which is washed out — 
from the beach sands accumulate only in the more quiet — 
waters some distance outside of the reef, and within the 
lagoons and channels where it settles. 
pila So tae alt 
| Dec. 19, 1872 
. 
of coral reefs and islands add — 
Noticing, then, the great power of the force of sea 
He notices the formation of mud in and 
“Tt takes place on all — 
In the smaller 
‘After remarking upon the abundance of fish around 
coral islands, especially in the instance of Taputenea, 
with an area of six square miles, whose population of 
7,000 is supported by fishing, Dana notices the drifting - 
of logs of wood on to remote islands. “An occasional 
log drifts to the shores, at some of the more isolate 
atolls, where the natives are ignorant of any land but | 
the spot they inhabit, they are deemed direct gifts from a 
propitiated deity. These drift logs were noticed by — 
Kotzebue at the Marshall Islands, and he remarked also _ 
that they often brought stones in their roots. Simila 
facts have been observed at the Gilbert Group and also 
Enderby’s Island and many other coral islands of the | 
Pacific. The stones at the Gilbert Islands, so far as” 
could be learned, are generally basaltic or volcanic, and j 
they are highly valued among the natives for whetstones, 
pestles, and hatchets. The logs are claimed by he 
chiefs for canoes.” These waifs and strays, and others, 
like the large masses of “ compact cellular larvee” lying i 
200 yards inside of the line of breakers on Rose Island, 
and the fragments of pummice and resin which, trans- 
ported by the waves, are collected by the natives on their 
shores, are very interesting and suggestive to the 
botanist, mineralogist, and archaologist—more so, per 
a 
