ts 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 lime in the interior of the combined polype body, formed
by budding and by fission in the way I described. You will perceive that
there is no necessary limit to this process. There is no reason why we
should