Coral and Coral Reefs | Page 5

these long filaments, which
are capable of vibration are termed. And thus, although the polype itself
may be a fixed creature unable to move about, it is able to spread its
offspring over great areas. For these creatures not only propel
themselves, but while swimming about in the sea for many hours, or
perhaps days, it will be obvious that they must be carried hither and
thither by the currents of the sea, which not unfrequently move at the
rate of one or two miles an hour. Thus, in the course of a few days, the
offspring of this stationary creature may be carried to a very great
distance from its parent; and having been so carried it loses these
organs by which it is propelled, and settles down upon the bottom of
the sea and grows up again into the form and condition of its parents.
So that if you suppose a single polype of this kind settled upon the
bottom of the sea, it may by these various methods--that is to say, by
cutting itself in two, which we call "fission," or by budding; or by
sending out these swimming embryos,--multiply itself to an enormous
extent, and give rise to thousands, or millions, of progeny in a
comparatively short time; and these thousands, or millions, of progeny
may cover a very large surface of the sea bottom; in fact, you will
readily perceive that, give them time, and there is no limit to the
surface which they may cover.
Having understood thus far the general nature of these polypes, which
are the fabricators both of the red and white coral, let us consider a little
more particularly how the skeletons of the red coral and of the white

coral are formed. The red coral polype perches upon the sea bottom, it
then grows up into a sort of stem, and out of that stem there grow
branches, each of which has its own polypes; and thus you have a kind
of tree formed, every branch of the tree terminated by its polype. It is a
tree, but at the end of the branches there are open mouths of polypes
instead of flowers. Thus there is a common soft body connecting the
whole, and as it grows up the soft body deposits in its interior a
quantity of carbonate of lime, which acquires a beautiful red or flesh
colour, and forms a kind of stem running through the whole, and it is
that stem which is the red coral. The red coral grows principally at the
bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, at very great depths, and the coral
fishers, who are very adventurous seamen, take their drag nets, of a
peculiar kind, roughly made, but efficient for their purpose, and drag
them along the bottom of the sea to catch the branches of the red coral,
which become entangled and are thus brought up to the surface. They
are then allowed to putrefy, in order to get rid of the animal matter, and
the red coral is the skeleton that is left.
In the case of the white coral, the skeleton is more complete. In the red
coral, the skeleton belongs to the whole; in the white coral there is a
special skeleton for every one of these polypes in addition to that for
the whole body. There is a skeleton formed in the body of each of them,
like a cup divided by a number of radiating partitions towards the
outside; and that cup is formed of carbonate of lime, only not stained
red, as in the case of the red coral. And all these cups are joined
together into a common branch, the result of which is the formation of
a beautiful coral tree. This is a great mass of madrepore, and in the
living state every one of the ends of these branches was terminated by a
beautiful little polype, like a sea anemone, and all the skeleton was
covered by a soft body which united the polypes together. You must
understand that all this skeleton has been formed in the interior of the
body, to suit the branched body of the polype mass, and that it is as
much its skeleton as our own bones are our skeleton. In this next coral
the creature which has formed the skeleton has divided itself as it grew,
and consequently has formed a great expansion; but scattered all over
this surface there were polype bodies like those I previously described.
Again, when this great cup was alive, the whole surface was covered
with a beautiful body upon which were set innumerable small polype

flowers, if we may so call them, often brilliantly coloured; and the
whole cup was built up in the same fashion by the deposit of carbonate
of