INFLUENCE ON ANEMONES AND CORALS. 11 



visitors and so affected the amenity of his grounds, had the 

 holes in the rocks from which they protruded bored by an 

 auger, yet by-and-by recuperation followed, and they expanded 

 their beautiful discs as before. 



The anemones which dwell in sand, such as Peachia and 

 Edwardsia, though occasionally extending in the Channel 

 Islands to the tidal regions, are as a rule beyond the reach of 

 man. Yet the cod pursues the former, it may be after dis- 

 lodgment by storms, while the stomachs of dabs and flounders 

 are often distended by the latter. Even were it granted that 

 every one of these anemones were swept off an area by storms 

 or by dredges (for trawls do not appear to affect them) nature 

 is not unprepared, for their minute pelagic young are carried 

 everywhere by currents, and even occasionally borne as it were 

 on a graceful carriage by the minute jelly-fishes, to the discs 

 of which they adhere by their tentacles. They then settle on 

 a suitable site and repeople an old area or extend the dis- 

 tribution of the species on a new. Such forms have thus a 

 double protection — firstly by a life in the sand, and, secondly, 

 .by a free-swimming larval condition. 



The wonderful extension, slow but sure, of coral reefs in 

 tropical regions is another instance of the vast resources of 

 nature — in the development of which man is powerless either 

 to check or modify. The multitudes of free-swimming larvae of 

 such stocks — far above the needs of coral extension — must 

 form, moreover, an important element in the food-supplies of 

 the ocean in the neighbourhood, whilst some holothurians 

 (sea-cucumbers) and fishes (Scar us) feed directly on the coral 

 itself. 



In our own waters the dead men's fingers (Alcyonium) and 

 sea-pens (Pennatula and Funiculina) maintain their ground 

 against hook and trawl just as the red coral of commerce does 

 in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. 



The capture of marine products for food or for commerce 

 has in some cases been carried on for centuries before science 

 stepped in to ascertain their nature, map out their life-histories, 

 and indicate the true course for legislative interference. The 

 fishery for the red or the precious coral of commerce in this 



