80 CORAL FORMATIONS 
Il STRUCTURE, GROWTH, AND HABITS OF CORAL 
ZOOPHYTES. 
1. Structure and Growth of Zoophytes. 
A singular degree of obscurity has been thrown around the growth 
of coral zoophytes and coral formations, through the various specula- 
tions which have been offered in place of facts; and to the present 
day, the subject is seldom mentioned without the qualifying adjective 
mysterious expressed or understood. Some writers, scouting the idea 
that reefs of rocks can be due in any way to “animalcules,” talk of 
electrical forces, the first and last appeal of ignorance. Others call in 
the fishes of the seas, suggesting that they are the masons, and work 
with their teeth in the accumulation of the calcareous material. Very 
many of those who discourse quite learnedly on zoophytes and reefs, 
imagine that the polyps are mechanical workers, heaping up these 
piles of rock by their united labours; and science still retains such 
terms as polypary, polypidom, as if each coral were the constructed 
hive or house of a swarm of polyps, like the honeycomb of the bee, 
or the hillock. of a colony of ants. 
It is vain to hope to understand fully the works of Him who is 
himself infinite and incomprehensible. The scrutinizing eye of 
science penetrates with far-reaching sight the system of things about 
us, and in the dim limits of vision reads everywhere the word mystery. 
All life, animal and vegetable, and all that is inanimate, declare it; 
surely there is no special reason, except such as may arise from want 
of study and consideration, for attributing it pre-eminently to the 
humblest grades of existence. 
It is not more surprising nor a matter of more difficult comprehen- 
sion that the polyp should form coral, than that the quadruped should 
form its bones, or the mollusc its shell. The processes are similar, 
and so the result: in each case it is a simple animal secretion, a for- 
mation of stony matter from the aliment which the animal receives, 
produced by certain parts of the animal fitted for this secreting 
process. This power of secretion is the first and most common of 
those that belong to living tissues; and though differing in different 
organs according to their end or function, it is all one process, both in 
nature or cause, whether in the animalcule or in man. Coral is never, 
