II. 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 speculations 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 the 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 comprehension 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 formation 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, therefore, an agglutination of grains made by the handiwork of the many armed polyps ; for it is no more an act of labour than bone-making in ourselves. And, again, it is not a collection of cells into which the coral animals may withdraw for concealment, any more than the skeleton of a dog is its house or cell; for every part of the coral of a polyp in most reef-making species is enclosed within the polyp where it was formed by the secreting process.

*

It is important that this point should be thoroughly understood, and fully appreciated. That error may no longer be perpetuated, the words polypary and the like, have been rejected by the author in his volume on Zoophytes, and the more familiar term corallum has been used instead.† this introductory explanation we proceed.

With

a. Structure of Coral Animals or Polyps.-A good idea of a coral polyp may be had from comparison with the garden aster; for the likeness in external form and delicacy of colouring is singularly close. The aster consists of a tinted disk bordered with one or more series of petals; and in exact analogy, the polyp flower, in its most common form, has a disk often richly coloured, fringed around with petal-like organs called tentacles. Below the disk, in contrast with the slender pedicel of the plant, there is a stout cylindrical pedicel or body,

men,

*It is not perhaps within the range of science to criticise the poet; yet we may say in this place, in view of the frequent use of the lines even by scientific that more error in the same compass could scarcely be found than in the part of Montgomery's Pelican Island, relating to coral formations. The poetry is beautiful, the facts nearly all errors-if literature allows of such an incongruity. For ourselves, we think the poet transcends his appropriate limits,

when false to nature.

† See page 15 of the Report on Zoophytes. The term corallium has been set aside by authors because of its being used for a genus of corals. Corallum is an old form of the same word, as particularly explained on the page just referred to, and is not liable to this objection. The true nature of calcareous corals was first pointed out by Milne, Edwards, and Ehrenberg.

often as broad as the disk itself, and usually not much longer, which contains the stomach and internal cavity of the polyp; and the mouth, which opens into the stomach, is placed at the centre of the disk. Here, then, the flower animal and the garden-flower diverge in character, the difference being required by the different modes of nutrition in the two kingdoms of nature.

There are many species of polyps, which have all the external and internal characters of coral polyps, yet secrete no lime or coral. Our descriptions of structure may be best drawn from them, and afterwards the single peculiarity of the coral-making polyp-its secretion of coral-will come under consideration. The species here referred to are called Actinic in science, in allusion to the radiated or aster-like flower which forms the summit of the animal.* There is the

same allusion in the common appellation Sea Anemone. The richest anemones, daisies, and tulips of our gardens would not rival them in beauty, neither will they exceed them in the size of their flowers; for a breadth of two and three inches is common. The polyps here alluded to, along with the coral polyps allied, constitute the order or division of zoophytes called Actinoidea.†

The Actinic are entirely fleshy, and usually live attached by their lower extremity to the submerged rocks of the shores. The mouth, at the centre of the flower-like disk forming the summit of the animal, is a simple opening without teeth or appendages of any kind. The tentacles-the petals of the flower-are tubular organs, and communicate internally with the interior cavity of the animal. The animal contracts when disturbed, and conceals the flower by rolling inward over it, the margin bearing the tentacles; and in this state it seems like a lifeless lump of animal matter. Left quiet for a while, it again expands and appears as before. This expansion is produced by receiving water into the interior from without, mostly through the mouth, and thus filling the tentacles and swelling out its fleshy body. They are generally found ex

* From axv, a ray of the sun.

This term alludes to their general resemblance to Actiniæ.

panded with the mouth wide open to receive their prey. As they are fixed to the rocks, they must wait for their food to come to them. When a crab, shell fish, or any thing alive, within the capabilities of their bodies, comes within reach, they usually secure it by closing upon the victim the tentacles (which commonly have a stinging power), and pushing it into the mouth. In many species the tentacles are too short to aid in capturing food except it be by stinging. These organs subserve also the purpose of aerating the blood, a function in which all parts of the body are more or less concerned.

The interior of the actinia contains a cylindrical stomach suspended from the disk, which opens at bottom into the general cavity of the body. This general cavity, below the stomach and around it, is divided into compartments by radiating fleshy lamellæ, the larger of which in their upper part connect the stomach with the sides of the animal. The most important function of these lamella is that of reproduction, some being spermatic, and the others bearing clusters of ova. These ova leave the body by passing out through the stomach and the mouth; but in many instances this does not take place till the young animal has proceeded from them. The refuse from the food after digestion in the stomach is also ejected by the mouth, as this is the only opening to the alimentary cavity. Other excrementitious matters, separated on the final elaboration of the chyle and its assimilation, may escape through the sides of the animal, the openings at the extremities of the tentacles, or in general by whatever pores or passages water may be ejected in the contraction of the animal.

One of the most singular peculiarities of polyps is their ready restoration of a lost part. Even a fragment will go on to complete the entire animal again; as with the fabled hydra of old, the knife is used but to multiply, for every section becomes a new animal.

In all the points mentioned in the description here given, the polyp of ordinary coral and the actinia are identical.

b. Process of Budding.—There is one mode of reproduction which, although having no necessary connection with coral

secretions, belongs almost exclusively to coral polyps. This is reproduction by buds, and the process is so similar to the production of buds in vegetation, that a remembrance of the latter will aid much in conceiving of it. The bud generally commences as a slight prominence on the side of the parent : the prominence enlarges, and soon a circle of tentacles grows out, with a mouth at the centre; enlargement goes on till the young finally equals the parent in size. Thus by budding, a compound group is commenced; and it is evident that if the parent and the new polyp go on budding again and so on, the compound group may continue to enlarge. This is the fact in nature. The polyps, one and all, continue propagating by buds, until in some instances thousands, or hundreds of thousands, have proceeded from a single one, and the colony has spread to a large size. Such is the Madrepora and Astræa. There are modifications of this process analogous to those in vegetation, but we need not dwell upon them in this place.

It is obvious that the connection of the polyps in such a compound group must be of the most intimate kind. The several polyps have separate mouths and tentacles, and separate stomachs; but beyond this there is no individual property. They coalesce, or are one, by intervening tissues, and there is a free circulation of fluids through the many pores or lacunes. The zoophyte is like a living sheet of animal matter, fed and nourished by numerous mouths and as many stomachs. In some species the coalescence is confined to the lower half of the polyps, or to a still less part; and in this case the animals project above the general living surface. Polyps thus clustered, spreading at summit a star of tentacles, constitute the flowering zoophytes of coral reefs.

Those coral animals which do not bud are to all external appearance true actiniæ. The existence of coral in the living coral zoophyte is nowhere apparent, and would not be suspected if not previously known; for, as before stated, it is wholly internal, and the visible exterior is the fleshy skin of the polyp.

c. Secretion of Coral.-We have already remarked on the