12 



MANS INFLUENCE ON CORALS, 



respect agrees with that for the food-fishes. Both had been 

 carried on for centuries before they attracted the earnest 

 attention of the scientific, and both are examples of the 

 long-continued prevalence of error, and, in the case of fishes, 

 even culpable lack of knowledge about a food- supply so 

 important. Indeed, the application of science to the problem 

 of the food-fishes is of much more recent date than that to the 

 coral of commerce, just as if personal adornment, and not 

 practical utility, were of primary importance in the world ! 



Contrasted with some oceanic forms the red coral is not 

 only represented by limited numbers, comparatively slow growth 

 and moderate powers of increase, but the area of distribution is 

 circumscribed. Moreover, fixed to rocks, stones, shells and dead 

 pieces of coral at the bottom of the sea, it could neither escape 

 the engines of capture, nor, by a pelagic habit, aid in the 

 spread of its larvae over a wide area. Yet, though hundreds 

 of boats' crews (Corallini) annually sweep the ground with 

 heavy bars of wood weighted with stones and fringed with 

 hempen tangles, this valuable treasure of the sea has by no 

 means been extirpated on the very sites where the ancestors of 

 the modern fishermen followed the same pursuit. The pelagic 

 larvae — perhaps only escaping as the parent-stock is drawn to 

 the surface — plant the species on the same or new areas and 

 defeat man's efforts to destroy it. 



Cydippe swimming downwards after engulphing a larval crab {Zoea) 



