39° LOWER FORMS OF MARINE LIFE 



Marseilles, but the product of the Algerian fishery is sent to Pisa and Trapani, 

 About 160 tons of coral are brought yearly into Italy, the articles made from 

 which are valued at nearly £500,000. The total annual value of rough coral has 

 been estimated at £2,000,000, while after manufacture the value is stated to reach 

 £10,000,000. The finest quality is of a delicate pinkish or flesh-like colour, uniform 

 in tint throughout, and occurring in large pieces. Inferior samples are sold at £2 

 per ounce, and small fragments, used for children's necklaces, at 5s. an ounce. 

 Even worm-eaten coral has a certain value in the East, as the natives of some 

 countries believe that gods dwell in the cups for the polyps. Of the several 

 species of Japanese red coral, the one locally known as momoirosango, and 

 technically as Gorallium, elatius, is the most valuable, attaining a maximum 

 value of about £30 per pound. 



Of sea-anemones it will be unnecessary to give a long notice on the present, 

 occasion, as the general characters of the more typical forms are well known, 

 although it may be repeated that their numerous tentacles terminate in simple 

 points. A few of the tropical species attain very large dimensions, measuring in 

 some instances as much as a couple of feet across the disc. The more typical 

 anemones are inhabitants of shallow water, and are attached by their large basal 

 discs to rocks, pebbles, shells, sea-weeds, etc. Several of them, such as the British 

 Adamsia, attach themselves to the shells carried by hermit-crabs ; this co- 

 partnership being apparently advantageous to both animals, the crab being 

 probably protected from some enemies by the anemone, while the latter obtains- 

 a share of the food captured by the crab. Such partnerships, it appears, are not 

 indiscriminate, as an anemone of one species almost invariably associates with a 

 particular kind of hermit-crab. 



Certain anemones belonging to the family Halcainpidce depart from the 

 ordinary type in that the base takes the form of a blunt cone, which is fixed in 

 sand or mud. Yet another group, the Minyadidce of the southern seas, has taken 

 to a free-swimming pelagic existence ; these species floating, mouth downwards, 

 just below the surface of the water, supported by a bladder formed from the basal 

 disc and filled with gas. One of these pelagic sea-anemones is specially character- 

 ised by the absence of the tentacles, which form such a distinctive feature of the 

 upper disc of the other members of the group, and has accordingly been named 

 Anactinea pelagica. These remarkable anemones were discovered in the tide- 

 wash of the Orissa coast of Bengal, and when first found were spherical in shape, 

 although when placed in water they soon changed to an ovate form, 

 ctenopiiores and The title of Ctenophora, that is to say, comb-bearers, has been 



Jeliy-Fish. bestowed on a group of free-swimming and for the most part trans- 

 lucent pelagic organisms belonging to the same great group, the Coelenterata, as 

 the corals and sea-anemones, but constituting, with the corallines and jelly-fishes 

 a separate subclass, the Hydrozoa, of which the little fresh-water Hydra is the 

 typical representative. This designation refers to the vertical rows of comb-like 

 structures which run in parallel lines along the muscular bands of the body ; these 

 organs being employed in locomotion, as the body does not alternately expand and 

 contract after the fashion obtaining in the true jelly-fishes. Exceedingly beautiful 

 in form as are these delicate organisms, they are nevertheless most voracious. The- 



