392 HOJIES WITHOUT HANDS. 



the tread as if they were made of sugar. The tubes are beauti- 

 fully cylindrical, and do not adhere to each other, being kept 

 asunder by partitions, which precisely resemble the boards 

 through which the pipes of an organ are passed. 



They are very thin, though hard, and a rough pressure of the 

 hand will always damage them. My own specimen is now sadly 

 shorn of its original fair dimensions, at least half of its tabes 

 having been broken away by the rude grasp of servants' hands, 

 just as my best specimens of the paper nautilus and other fragile 

 curiosities were damaged before I learned to put them under 

 lock and key. 



The animal is not a largo one, its length being scarcely greater 

 than that of the distance from one partition to another. The 

 arrangement of the tubes and the partitions looks veiy compli- 

 cated, but is, in fact, simple enough. The animal secretes around 

 itself the calcareous substance which forms the tube, but when 

 it has reached to its full extent, it is obliged to leave the cylin- 

 drical home in which it had resided. The partition is then 

 secreted by the edge of the mantle, or membrane by which the 

 creature is attached to its tube, and the zoophyte then begins 

 another tube immediately above that which it has quitted. 



Sometimes there is a kind of floor that separates the upper 

 tube from the lower, but it is extremely thin, so that a tolerably 

 stout bristle can be pushed through it. The partition is at least 

 twice as strong as the tubes, which are scarcely thicker than the 

 paper on which this account is printed, and is not solid, but 

 perforated with holes just like the machine-made bricks which 

 have lately come into use. In my own specimen there is a 

 curious proof of the abundance of submarine animal life. The 

 group of Organ-pipe Coral has enveloped a piece of White Coral, 

 and has shown a remarkable instance of the manner in which 

 beings so low in the scale of nature can accommodate them- 

 selves to circumstances. As if conscious that the coral formed 

 an obstacle which they could not pass in a direct line, they 

 ceaaed from tube-building when they arrived within a little 

 distance of the coral, and threw iip a partition vertically instead 

 of horizontally, so as to envelop the greater part of the coral 

 with the red calcareous substance. Having done so, they then 

 made a new foundation upon the coral, and built a fresh series 

 of tubes, so that when viewed from above, the series of tubes is 



