Il6 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



of these animals, and their astonishing fecundity — 

 namely, by the wonderful faculty they have of 

 promptly regenerating, of multiplying in a short time 

 their generations successively, and rapidly accumulat- 

 ing ; finally, by the total amount of reunion of the 

 products of these numerous little animals. 



" Moreover, it is a fact now well known and well 

 established that the coralligenous polyps, namely, 

 this great family of animals with coral stocks, such as 

 the millepores, the madrepores, astraeae, meandrinae, 

 etc., prepare on a great scale at the bottom of the 

 sea, by a continual secretion of their bodies, and as 

 the result of their enormous multiplication and their 

 accumulated generations, the greatest part of the cal- 

 careous matter which exists. The numerous coral 

 stocks which these animals produce, and whose bulk 

 and numbers perpetually increase, form in certain 

 places islands of considerable extent, fill up extensive 

 bays, gulfs, and roadsteads ; in a word, close harbors, 

 and entirely change the condition of coasts. 



" These enormous banks of madrepores and mille- 

 pores, heaped upon each other, covered and inter- 

 mingled with serpulae, different kinds of oysters, 

 patellae, barnacles, and other shells fixed by their 

 base, form irregular mountains of an almost limitless 

 extent. 



" But when, after the lapse of considerable time, the 

 sea has left the places where these immense deposits 

 are laid down, thfen the slow but combined alteration 

 that these great masses undergo, left uncovered and 

 exposed to the incessant action of the air, light, and a 

 variable humidity, changes them gradually into fossils 

 and destroys their membranous or gelatinous part, 

 which is the readiest to decompose. This alteration, 

 which the enormous masses of the corals in ques- 

 tion continued to undergo, caused their structure to 

 gradually disappear, and their great porosity un- 

 ceasingly diminished the parts of these stony masses 



