CCELENTERATES, SPONGES, AND PROTOZOA 



159 



Fig. 413. — A Branching Coral 



supported by a flat or cup-shaped skeleton. The remaining Corals 



are colonies, formed by the budding of one primary individual. 



Each member of the colony is essentially like an anemone in 



structure, and thfe various individuals 



are connected together by a common 



body, just as the leaves of a plant 



are continuous with the branching 



stem. All sorts of shapes are assumed 



in different species. It may not be 



altogether superfluous to quote here 



the remarks of Saville Kent (in The 



Great Barrier Reef of Australia) 



about the once popular and even yet 



not altogether defunct fallacy which 



ascribes the formation of coral to an 



intelligent and industrious " insect ". 



" Notwithstanding the wide diffu- 

 sion of knowledge, which includes a 

 smattering of many ' 'ologies ', it is 

 astonishing to find how tenacious an influence ancient tradition 

 concerning coral organization still exerts on the public mind. The 

 poetic fallacy of coral-reefs being built up by an association of 

 ' insects ' between which there subsists a relationship analogous to 

 that which obtains between the ' busy bee and its waxen cell ' is 

 frequently enunciated from the pulpit, and in the pages of the 

 daily newspapers. . . . Doubtless there is a large section of 

 the public whose zoological lore will ever remain restricted to 

 the narrow limits of that of Punch's railway porter, who, puzzled 

 as to the classification of the old lady's tortoise, declared that, 

 being ' neither a dawg nor a bird, it must needs be a hinsec '. 

 There is also a very large multitude to whom the term ' insect ' 

 includes everything not distinctly referable to the category of 

 ' flesh, fowl, or good red herring '. . . . The coral animal ... is, 

 individually, a simple polyp, comparable in every essential detail 

 with the ordinary simply - organized sea - anemone familiar to 

 every sea-side or aquarium visitor, with the exception that it 

 possesses the power of secreting a dense, calcareous, skeleton 

 out of the lime held abundantly in suspension in probably every 



sea. 



