The life history is as strange as the coral that results. The young polyp produces at first a quite ordinary, small, cylindrical cup, [Plate XXIX], which is fixed to a stone in the usual way. After reaching a certain size this swells at the top into a disc, like a mushroom on its stalk, except that the mushroom head is turned wrong side up. A little later this head falls off on to the sand, where it continues to grow into the big Fungia discs first met with. This, however, is not the death of the original polyp, which goes on growing new heads which in turn fall off, ad infinitum!
Many attempts have been made to visualise the beauties of a coral garden, in poetry, romance, and works of sober science. I can make no claim for my own picture, but that perhaps it is written with better acquaintance than is generally possible to poets and romanticists, and that it is free from exaggeration, as the writings of a biologist should be.
Let us imagine our exploration from the beginning. It is a calm morning in summer, the sea a pearl of beauty, under the new-risen sun. The heat, great even in the early morning, is unnoticed in enjoyment of the delicate pink and blue and golden shades reflected by the mirror-like surface, unbroken by any indication of what lies below. The tints of reef and shoal, which form so beautiful a part of the seascape when the water is rippled, are now exchanged for atmospheric colours, which, as we float over from deep to shallow water, give place to a panorama of coral gardens below.
Plate XXIX
Fig. 61
Fig. 62
Fig. 63