CH. VI MARINE FAUNA OF TALISSE SHOBES 119 



skeleton. When a glass vase is fiUed with a profusion of 

 drooping flowers it may be partially or completely hidden 

 by them, and yet we are accustomed to say that the flowers 

 are inside the vase. So it is with a coral ; the fleshy parts 

 may overlap and hide the hard parts, yet, as a fact, the hard 

 parts are anatomically outside the soft. 



As the colony of polypes grows and increases by budding, 

 more and more of the calcareous skeleton is formed, new 

 cups, septa and other structures are laid down layer upon 

 layer over the old, and new branches grow out from the old 

 ones. Endless are the varieties of form the coral skeleton 

 may take. Every specimen the naturalist handles differs 

 from every other in the mode of branching, in the number 

 of its branches, in the arrangement of the spines, warts, 

 blotches, septa and canals with which it is covered, just as 

 every oak is different from every other oak, and every beech- 

 tree from every other beech. This immense variety in the 

 form of coral skeletons has led some authorities to make of 

 them an immense number of different species. Now, as 

 the species are usually named and separated from one another 

 by specialists at home who have at their command only the 

 dried hard parts to examine, we have very meagre accounts 

 of the varieties of the colour, structure, and reproduction 

 of the polypes. If these details were better recorded by those 

 who collect corals for museums, I am sure we should be 

 able to reduce immensely the number of species which have 

 been made by an examination of the hard parts only. 



Imagine a party of botanists starting off to name the 

 species of British oaks and beeches in the depth of winter. 

 With only the form of the bark and stem and the mode of 

 branching to guide them, without flowers, fruit or leaves, 

 they would probably make a great many more species than 

 the botanists who undertook the work in summer. So it is 

 with corals ; the naturalists who have named the species 



