22 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



over a wide area. Its resources for continuing the species under 

 disadvantageous circumstances, caused by the constant efforts of 

 man, are : (1) the facility for branching, and the fact that broken 

 branches retain their vitality and grow on a fresh site, while the 

 fixed portion, if not too much reduced, can send up a new stem ; 

 (2) the pelagic nature of the larvae (true planulse), which carry 

 to new and suitable sites swarms of the species. Finally, the 

 remarks applied in connection with the sea-fishes are appropriate 

 here, viz. : " Nature has been able by her unaided resources to 

 ward off extinction in a species so eagerly desired by man for 

 one of the greatest incentives, viz. pecuniary gain, and yet so 

 circumscribed in distribution, and so slenderly supplied with 

 means of dispersion in comparison with many marine animals. 

 Moreover, all this has occurred in a sea specially excluded, from 

 its limited boundaries, from the consideration of the question in 

 the ' Resources of the Sea,' which has been swept by hundreds 

 of boats' crews annually by day and by night. If the con- 

 tinuance of the red coral, therefore, has been assured (for 

 authorities deem the diminished price rather than scarcity of 

 coral at the root of the present depression), what difficulty is 

 there in regard to the permanent abundance of the chief food- 

 fishes of the open seaboard of our country — set as it is in the 

 midst of an almost boundless ocean — with all the marvellous 

 powers of increase (a thousand-fold greater than the coral), so 

 characteristic of them on the one hand, and all the varied and 

 gigantic resources of nature in the sea at command on the other ? 

 Science as well as experience answers that there is none."* 



* ' Resources of the Sea,' p. 241. 



