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Prof. Owen on Life and Species. 49 
time endowed with generative faculties to multiply and repro- 
duce its kind for all time; the creative act henceforth an 
thereafter being dispensed with? Accepting, with the theo- 
ogian, this view, it must then be applied to each of the more 
or less closely allied species associated in the same coral work- 
house. The origin of such species thus dates back to the be- 
ginning of life on the globe.* The first created coral-polyp 
ss Sa potentially, the germs of its successors throughout 
time 
Observation, however, shows that the species of existing An- 
thozoa cannot be traced very far back: those with a flexible, or 
with a branched, calcareous axis began only at the tertiary pe- 
riod; and, of the genera of eocene lamellate or stony corals, all 
the species are extinct, and have been superseded in their grand 
and useful operations by those now forming reefs and atolls. 
As we extend our researches back in time we find generic and 
family types of coral-polyps passing away: the prevalent pat- 
tern of stellate cups of rays of s¢x or its multiples, has superse- 
ded a simpler pattern of four or its multiples. Of the Cyatho- 
phyllide of the paleozoic reefs which present a quadripartite 
character of their plaited polyp-cells, not one such species now 
exists, or has been observed in any formation later than lower 
green-sand. Moreover, the filling up of abandoned cells in the 
course of growth of the polypary becomes changed from a 
more complex to a more simple method, as we recede in time 
in pursui ur comparisons.t De 
With this generalized result of observation of reef-building 
polyps we return to the initial question in a frame of mind 
inevitably other than that in which the creation of a coral- 
island is pondered on by one ignorant of the geological history 
of the class engaged in its construction. Was direct sea 
e 
* T leave out of the question the subsequent lethal influence of the heavy and — 
1tinuous rain a ; i to raise it above the highest — 
