Marvels of the Universe 



417 



causes it to be almost unaffected by currents or sea-bed swells which strike at right-angles to 

 the principal plane. 



To see these creatures in a living state, we must imagine them as being completely clothed with 

 a thin laj-er of ^-i^•ifying flesh. The flesh is external and the bone internal, and this is, as far as 

 possible, the complete opposite to the arrangement obtaining in the crabs and other crustaceans, 

 in which the flesh is inside and the skeleton outside. 



The flesh of this order of Corals covers the inside hard corallum as the bark of a tree 

 covers the woody trunk. It is the living principle of the animal. You will see no clefts in 

 the hard part in which the polyps might have lived had they been like the Madrepores, for the 

 clefts were, in the latter, actually in the skeleton itself. All these Gorgonian Coral-polyps were 

 seated in little clefts 

 which opened out from 

 the flesh, so that when 

 the flesh had decayed 

 there remained nothing 

 to show where they had 

 formerly lived. We have 

 only the internal axis left 

 behind. 



The order to which 

 the Fan-Corals belong 

 has an additional claim 

 to beauty over and above 

 the order of the Brain- 

 Corals and the Madre- 

 pores, in that everj- one 

 of the eight tentacles 

 which always surround 

 the mouth of each of 

 these little sea-anemone- 

 like polyps is beautifully 

 fringed. The tentacles 

 are always eight in num- 

 ber. The whole organism 

 is a compound one, and 

 all the polyps intercom- 

 municate by means of a 

 network of canals which 

 permeates the fleshy bark 

 and is joined to each of 

 the polyps in succession. 



Nature is not slov.- to 

 cover up man's work, and 

 so when a broken sub- 

 marine cable is brought 

 up it is found to be 

 generously coated with 

 these flexible corals among 

 other things. 



THE SEA CANE. 



In this species the slender flexible branches are unconntcted by cross branches, an 



are very long and like canes. 



29 



