152 Letter X. 
and delightful to hear the angry hum of the insects outside, 
as they go tearing round, like ravenous wolves seeking entrance 
into a sheep-fold. But if they do get in—well, the sooner you 
get up and hunt them to death, the better for your own peace 
and comfort. 
Besides the insects on shore, Aniwa has its circle of sea 
insects—busy little creatures, which have all work and no 
play—the coral polypes. 
Queer little creatures are these coral polypes. They have 
neither head nor legs, but seem to get on very well without 
them. In the scientific language of Milne Edwards, they are 
“animals organised for a sedentary mode of life, having no 
locomotive organs, and being provided with a circle of retractile 
tentaculze around the mouth, and a central gastric cavity.” In 
fact, they are all stomach, with the exception of the “ retractile 
tentaculz,” which the little gourmands use for seizing anything 
eatable which comes within their reach, and stowing it away in 
their “ central gastric cavity.” 
According to the way in which the polypes multiply them- 
selves, depends the shape and appearance of those lime-like 
structures which we callcorals. Some propagate by lateral buds, 
z. é, the parent produces several young ones from its sides, 
and then the flat solid masses of coral are produced ; while 
others propagate by vertical buds, and then the upright branch- 
ing kinds are produced. Just as the properties which lie hid- 
den in the seed influence the form of the whole tree—every 
shoot obeying the same fixed laws,—so do these with which 
the founding polype is invested, determine the form of the 
coral edifice. I say founding polype because each coral tree 
or mass is the work of one family, all sprung from a single 
polype, the originator of the building. 
Let us take the branching coral, and look for a moment at 
the habits of the little builders and inhabitants: of it. 
