36 CORALS. 
lites always increasing and building upon the 
skeleton remains of others. 
The corallite is indeed not an insect but is, 
with the sea-anemone, jelly fish, and other 
plant like animals, a member of a much lower 
order of the animal kingdom named the 
Coloeentera. 
Beautiful and various are the shapes and 
forms, of different coral ; and in some species, 
the individual corallite is microscopic in size, 
while in others, it may be half an inch or 
more in diameter. 
Each corallite consists of a more or less 
cup-shaped pedestal of limestone or carbonate 
of lime. Covering the opening, at the top of 
this, is a disk of a jelly-like and slimy sub- 
stance with a radiating fringe of tentacles, 
which may be expanded or contracted ; in the 
centre of this disk is an opening or mouth ; 
this jelly-like section is the coral polypus. 
Food, generally in the form of microscopic 
organisms suspended in the water, finds its 
way through the mouth into the ventral sysj 
tern of the corallite, and it is from the shells 
of these minute animals together with the 
salts of lime held in solution by the water, that 
the carbonate of lime is obtained from which 
the base or pedestal is built. 
The coral offered for sale, or seen in collec- 
tions, consists of a group or colony of the 
pedestals and skeletons of carbonate of lime 
only; the jelly-like disk and tentacles are 
washed off with water or by boiling with 
caustic soda, and the “corah’ left is bleached 
in the sun. Carbonate of lime is a very 
