-12 



COR. VI,. 



The next day the class made drawings, and wrote 

 upon the lesson. 



The following papers are from the set, and are as 

 they came from the pupils. 



Coral, in" Haery aiabrey. 



Coral is formed by little marine animals, called polyps. Some people call 

 ihem insects, but they are much lower in the scale than insects are. Coral 

 is the skeleton, the framework of the polyp. An island built of coral is a 

 colony of these animals. 



Fig. 21. 



71*. i! 



FigT. 1- Eight armed, fringed polyp of agorgonia, Flexaura. Fig 2. Dissections of an anemone, essen- 

 'tiaUy similar to a coral polyp; e c e, arms or tentacles; A, mouth, below which is the cavity of the 

 stomach; D, body; B, opened tentacle, the arrow showing direction of water into the interspaces ; k 

 k, the water flowing from one to the other through the openings, i i. 



A polyp is somewhat cylindrical in shape, with tentacles, or arms, ra- 

 diating from the upper surface, as petals do from the centre of a flower. 

 It has a mouth in the centre of the top. 



The tentacles are used in breathing and gathering food. The food of 

 the polyp is constantly floating about in the water. When anything eat- 

 able is floating near, he finds it out by a kind of sixth sense, a combina- 

 tion of all the other senses. 



From each tentacle issues forth a number of fibers with rings on the 

 end called lasso cells. Whenever these cells touch any living thing, it be- 



