CORALLINES. 235 



yellows, mixed with rich shades of purple, from pale pink to deep blue. 

 Bright red, yellow, and peach-coloured millepores clothed those fleshy 

 masses that were dead, mingled with beautiful pearly flakes of escharse 

 and reteporse ; the latter looking like lace-work in ivory. Amidst the 

 branches of the corals, like birds among trees, floated many beautiful 

 fish, radiant with metallic greens or crimsons, or fantastically banded 

 with black and yellow stripes. Patches of clear white sand were seen 

 here and there on the floor, with dark hollows and recesses, beneath 

 overhanging masses and ledges. All these, seen through the clear 

 crystal water, the ripple of which gave motion and quick play of light 

 and shadow to the whole, formed a scene of the rarest beauty; and left 

 nothing to be desired by the eye, either in elegance of form or bril- 

 liancy and harmony .of colouring." 



Captain Basil Hall thus describes a coral-reef near Loo Choo : 

 " When the tide has left the rock for some time dry, it appears to be a 

 compact mass, exceedingly hard and rugged ^ but as the water rises, 

 and the waves begin to wash over it, the polyps protrude themselves 

 from holes which were before invisible. These animals are of a great 

 variety of shapes and sizes, and in such prodigious numbers, that in a 

 short time the whole surface of the rock appears to be alive and in 

 motion. The most common form is that of a star, with arms, or ten- 

 tacles, which are moved about with a rapid motion in all directions, 

 probably to catch food. Others are so sluggish, that they may be mis- 

 taken for pieces of the rock, and are generally of a dark colour. When 

 the coral is broken above high- water mark, it is a^olidhard stone; but 

 if any part of it be detached at a spot where the tide reaches every day, 

 it is found to be full of polyps of different lengths and colours ; some 

 being as fine as a thread, of a bright yellow, and sometimes of a blue 

 colour. The growth of coral appears to cease when no longer exposed 

 to the washing of the sea. Thus a reef rises in the form of a cauli- 

 flower, till the top has gained the level of the highest tides, above which 

 the animalcules have no power to advance ; and the reef, of course, no 

 longer extends upwards." 



Of the myriads upon myriads of organised beings created to work 

 out the grand designs of Providence, all calculation seems futile ; as the 

 result would be beyond the grasp of our comprehension. The Poly- 

 nesian Archipelago, now dubbed one of the great divisions of the globe, 

 has its foundation formed of coral reefs, the spontaneous growth of once- 

 living zoophytes. Of the immense extent of the geographical changes 

 efi'ected by the tiny polyps. Dr. Mantell observes: "We may form 

 some idea, from the facts stated by competent observers, that in the 



