212° ISLES OF SUMMER, 
or shrub, through its little round of life it remains fastened to 
the same spot, and the process of increasing and multiplying 
never stops. Closely compacted in compound groups, a single 
zoophyte is formed by a budding process differing little from the 
budding process in vegetable growth. The coral animals while 
thus closely associated, living together and constantly multiply- 
ing, secrete the beautiful corallum or coral of commerce and cab- 
inets, which is merely the skeleton on which the soft and perishable 
portion of the animal rests, and to which it adheres. Coral reefs 
are, in their outer surfaces, mainly composed of great communi- 
ties of these flowering zodphytes, below which the dead skeletons 
are compacted and solidified. 
The coral reefs were divided by Charles Darwin in his Voyage 
of a Naturalist, published many years ago, into three classes. 
The first, which are found in the immediate neighborhood of the 
land, in shallow water, he called fringing reef corals; and the 
second, barrier reef corals. These two surround islands or skirt 
continents, but they are separated from the neighboring shores 
by navigable channels, while their outer margins often border 
ocean depths as vast as those seen from lofty mountain tops. A 
barrier coral reef is formed off the coast of Australia, of sufficient 
length to more than reach from Nassau to New York. It is from 
twenty to thirty miles from the shore, and is a breakwater to a 
great natural highway, having a depth of water of from sixty to 
six hundred feet. The remaining class of coral reefs are circular 
in form and are called atolls. They encircle great lagoons, or 
large areas of ocean water, to which access is generally obtained 
through breaches or openings upon their leeward sides—where 
we would naturally anticipate the little corals would be most ac- 
tively at work, as they would be there less exposed to the force 
and fury of the ocean when its billows are storm-tossed. But 
Creative Wisdom has secured their services for the windward side 
