The Alcyonaria are very common on some parts of our coast, where scarcely a stone or shell is dredged up that does not support one or more specimens known to the fishermen as "cow's paps," "dead men's fingers," and other popular names. This round and lobed fleshy mass is quite a colony in itself; placed in pure sea water, it very soon presents certain yellow or grass-like points, which gradually expand and display themselves in their native transparent and animated coralline. Each of these polyps have eight dentate petals, in the centre of which is the mouth; the body of the polyp is tubular, varying externally in length, traversed internally throughout its entire mass by a tissue studded with reddish spiculæ, and furrowed with small reed-like ribbons, common to all the individuals of the association.
Among the Tubiporidæ may be noted Tubipora musica (Linnæus), from the Indian Ocean, characterised by its stony tubes, simple, numerous, straight or flexible, parallel, and slightly radiating, of a fine purple, and united together at intervals by transverse bands, so as to resemble the pipes of an organ. The polyp is a brilliant grass green, according to Péron; the tentacula furnished on each side with two or three rows of granulous fleshy papillæ, to the number of sixty to eighty (Lesson).
The Gorgonia is studded with calcareous or siliceous spiculæ which form a crust in drying. This crust is friable, and frequently preserves the colours more or less brilliant which characterise it. Their cells are sometimes hollowed out of the plain surface; sometimes they occur in the projecting mammals; these are smooth, rough, or scaly—sometimes pendent the one from the other.
Plate IV.—Coral Island of Clermont-Tonnerre, in the Pomotouan Archipelago.
These animals attach themselves to solid bodies, sometimes even to each other, grafting themselves or interlacing each other in all directions. In colour they are whitish, pure white, yellow, and apple-green; their shades, passing from olive-brown to deep blue, from vermilion to violet, and from pale yellow to pearly-grey. Each tube or cell contains an individual. The cells are more or less deep, according to the species. The polyps are composed generally of a hidden portion more or less tubular, and of a star-like portion more or less displayed. This latter portion presents from eight to twelve soft and granulous wattles, susceptible of expansion, like the petals of a flower. When these appendages are displayed, they often attain twice the height of the body; in this state they are nearly transparent, except towards the extremity. They extend or compress these wattles, dilate or contract the mouth according to their wants; but their digestive tube is firmly soldered to the cell, while the axis which supports the cells is motionless. What a singular combination is here presented! Trees, one-half of which are animated, growing at the bottom of the sea; polyps, one-half of which is imprisoned, and riveted to their person; their stomachs in the bark, their arms on a branch, their movements perfect repose!
These minute silent workers are active and indefatigable; their task is to separate the salt and other chemical particles from the waters of the ocean, and, while feeding themselves, secrete and organise the axis which bears their lodging. They love the warmer regions of the ocean; in colder regions, the results of their labours are extremely limited: the one forms a sward of submarine life, which carpets the rocks; the other produces animated stalactites, great shrubs, whole forests of small trees. The electric cable which unites Sardinia to the Genoese fort was so encrusted with corals and bryozoares, that certain portions taken from the water for repairs had attained the size of a small barrel.
The atolls present three unfailing and constant peculiarities. Sometimes they constitute a great circular chain, the centre of which is occupied by a deep basin, in direct communication with the exterior sea, through one or many breaches of great depth. These are the atolls, described more than two centuries ago by Pyrard de Laval; sometimes they surround, but at some distance, a small island, in such a manner as to constitute a sort of skeleton or girdle of reefs; finally they may form the immediate edging or border of an island or continent. In this last case they are called fringing littorals, or edging reefs. At the distance of a few hundred yards only from the edge of some of these reefs, the sea is of such a depth that the sounding-lead has failed to reach the bottom.
In order to give an idea of the general form of these atolls, although they are rarely so regular, the reader is referred to [Pl. III.], which represents one of these islands of the Pomotouan Archipelago, in the Indian Ocean. It represents the island of Clermont-Tonnerre, figured by Captain Wilkes in the American Exploring Expedition. The exterior girdle of rocks here surrounds a basin nearly circular. Such is the general form—the typical form, so to speak—of the coral isles, of which this is a fair representation.
The zoophytes which form these mineral accumulations belong to diverse groups, and nowhere have the results of observations made upon these atolls been more minutely described than in Mr. Darwin's remarks on the grand Cocos Island situated to the south of Sumatra, in the Indian Ocean.