Coral

“ Great forests of coral, once white and pink and red with teeming life but now drab and dead, still thrust their arms upward, their former beauty covered and distorted by the dust of the ages. Whales and sharks and serpents and fish of divers species and sizes, together with great eels and monsters of the deep, lay thickly over the land, their mummified remains shriveled by the intense heat, their ghastliness softened by the ashes of the years. ”

“ Through the clear water I could see every crevice and cranny in the shelving slope of coral; the mouths of gloomy caverns which undermined the reef, and swarms of fish, as strangely colored as the coral itself, passing through them, flashing across sunlit spaces, or hovering in the shadows of overhanging ledges. It was a strange world to look down upon and stranger still to see men moving about in it as though it were their natural home. Sometimes they grasped their spears as a poniard would be held for a downward blow; sometimes with the thumb forward, thrusting with an underhand movement. ”

“ There are precipices clothed with a thick bush of spreading coral, some seeking the light by reaching out horizontally, others by growing upwards tree fashion, what appear to be bare rocks turning out to be massive colonies, as much alive as the more plant-like forms, caves, dark in contrast to the bright corals that surround their mouths, and the white shell-sand with which they are floored. ”

“ A circle of rock, enclosing a miniature lake, blazes with rose and scarlet anemones, and the boat, floating over the wilderness of marine vegetation, pauses above a coral growth, varied in form as any tropical woodland. Majestic trees, of amber and emerald hue, stand with roots muffled in fading fern, or sunk in perforated carpets of white sponge, and huge vegetable growths or giant weeds, lustrous with metallic tints of green and violet, fill clefts and ravines of coral rock. ”

“ Bathes its boughs in fountain mists auroral,
Hides a pearl within each bloom of coral.
And the green earth smiles to heaven above.
Like a blushing girl elate and slender,
Tint of flesh it taketh with the spring ”

“ But wonderful are the coral gardens—coral of every shape and sort, great branches of it, big boulders of it, and the haunt of innumerable strange brilliantly coloured fish and other creatures. Sometimes when the tide goes out deep pools are left in these coral gardens, the water being clear as glass, revealing the most marvellously beautiful creatures of every sort. There are scores of fish of every shape, as brilliantly coloured as hummingbirds—so brilliant in colour as to be quite uncanny. ”

“ Meanwhile among and around about these coral towers, cuttle-fish and nautili darted, while mailed crustaceans chased each other, fought and frolicked and devoured each other. See, we have another fossil in the rock, the beautiful stone lilies; they must have a chapter to themselves; and here again are lamp shells and other and different mollusks of the Silurian time. Here they were crowded, swimming and playing in these living coral bowers. How they were dashed by thousands upon this beach of sand! ”

“ The builder coral, glimmering in its softer parts with delicate hues and tints, throws up its stony barrier through a thousand miles of length and a third as much in breadth, fringing the continents with bays and sounds and atoll islands like fairy rings of the sea. Animate flowers—sea-nettles, sea anemones, plumularia, campanularia, hydropores, confervae, oscillatoria, bryozoa—people the great waters. Sea-urchins, star-fish, sea-eggs, combative gymnoti, polypes, struggle and thrive with ever-renewing change of color; gelatinous worms that shine like stars cling to every weed ”

“ But after the first impulse of delight, one almost comes to overlook this charming foreground; for beneath the water lies a tangle and a maze of all things lovely for shape and color and growth and motion. Coral takes a hundred flowery forms, weeds branch like trees or wave like serpents, sponges are cups of amethyst and ruby. When waves lie still, one sees just as clearly into the depths below as into the air above, and almost as far, as it seems. The vegetation is gigantic in its loveliness. ”

“ In time the old coral insects below die, leaving behind them the hard limestone frame which they have built. The younger coral above lives on, sending forth buds which in turn do their share of the building, and in time,—in countless ages of time,—reefs and islands rise out of the mighty depths of the sea, built by the untiring energy of these marvellous little insects. ”

“ Now we seem to be exploring a coral world in the depths of the sea, and half expect to meet startled fishes darting hither and thither among the fantastically sculptured grots and low-fretted arches through which we creep. ”

“ In warm seas the most conspicuous of rock-making organisms are the corals known as the reef builders. Floating in a boat over a coral reef, as, for example, off the south coast of Florida or among the Bahamas, one looks down through clear water on thickets of branching coral shrubs perhaps as much as eight feet high, and hemispherical masses three or four feet thick, all abloom with countless minute flowerlike coral polyps, gorgeous in their colors of yellow, orange, green, and red. ”

“ Sometimes they shoot them out in straight lines on either side, and then the aspect of the whole thing reminds one of a tiny chandelier in which the coral drops make the pendants, or they may be caught up in a succession of loops or floating in long streamers; indeed, there is no end to the fantastic forms they assume, ever astonishing you by some new combination of curves. ”

“ The masses of coral differ exceedingly in size, some consisting of the habitations of only two or three polypi, whilst others are the gradual production of a vast and constantly succeeding population; some form branched trees and shrubs of the most various and elegant forms, others grow in solid masses, but all, when living, present a most beautiful appearance from the charming and often brilliant diversity of colours with which they are adorned. ”

“ The coral-polyps of the ocean build from their secretions solid, branching masses of limestone, within which they conceal their jelly-like forms, furnishing another striking example of the care Nature takes for all its creatures. ”

“ All this mass of coral is formed by living things,—polyps they are called. They are like tiny sea anemones, only they grow attached to one another, forming a compound animal, like a tree with stem and branches, and little sea anemones for flowers. ”

“ Now the amazing thing about the corals is that the polyps have entered into an alliance with certain microscopic plants which come to live in their bodies, and they feed upon the starchy products these plants form in sunlight, and even upon the plants themselves. So intimate is the union of these strange partners that neither can live without the other, the coral has lost its independence, and in fact as well as in appearance leads the life of a plant. ”

“ There is a bit in the house there,—that rough, white, stony stuff on the table in the parlor. It's full of little holes, you know. Well, those holes are the front doors of hundreds of little polypes, or coral worms, who build the great branches of coral, and live there. They are of various shapes and colors,—some like stars; some fine as a thread, and blue or yellow; others like snails and tiny lobsters. Some people say the real coral-makers are shaped like little oblong bags of jelly, closed at one end, the other open, with six or eight little feelers, like a star, all around it. ”

“ As the tree or ball of coral grows, spreading farther, giving birth to fresh generations of polyps, the old ones die off. So the living and the dead are found in one community, in close touch, on a single branch or a single mound of coral. At the tip of each twig may be the brightly-coloured active jelly, while the stem below is a dead skeleton. On a solid mass of coral, twenty feet in diameter, the whole outside may be alive, down perhaps to a depth of half-an-inch, while the whole inside is lifeless bone. ”

“ Many of the large hemispherical corals live on the reef like loose stones, but on turning them over one may find quite a small shell, or coral branch, attached to the centre of the underside. This is the foundation of the whole, the resting place of the tiny floating larva, the growth of which first covered the stone on which it settled by a vigorous colony which when large enough to be independent of support continued its growth until the mass exceeded by hundreds of times the bulk of the original foundation. ”

“ The spaces between them become filled with substances floating in the ocean, and with pieces of coral which are broken from the reef by the fierce dashing of the waves. The whole forms a solid mass, stronger, perhaps, than any stone masonry. The fragments of coral suffer no serious injury by breaking, but if lodged in some favorable spot they continue to grow. ”

“ After I had learned a great many interesting things about the life and habits of the children of the sea—how in the midst of dashing waves the little polyps build the beautiful coral isles of the Pacific, and the foraminifera have made the chalk-hills of many a land—my teacher read me "The Chambered Nautilus," and showed me that the shell-building process of the mollusks is symbolical of the development of the mind. ”

“ The animals which form coral are scattered over the seas of all countries in the world. The red coral is comparatively limited, but the polypes which form the white coral are widely scattered. There are some of them which remain single, or which give rise to only small accumulations; and the skeletons of these, as they die, accumulate upon the bottom of the sea, but they do not come to much; they are washed about and do not adhere together, but become mixed up with the mud of the sea. ”

“ Coral is built by living creatures, near the surface of the water. All that the waves have to do is, firstly, to bring abundance of food to the polyps, when alive, since by reason of their ponderous rock-skeletons they cannot go in search of food; and secondly, after the death of the polyps, to break and grind and heap together the skeleton-remains. ”

“ There are coral reefs and coral trees, domes and balls of coral, graceful vases, and all sorts and kinds of different plants and odd growths.
“You know that living coral cannot exist above the surface of the ocean, for exposure to the sun and air kills the polyps; yet it is always growing upward and outward, the living animals making their homes upon the tombs of their ancestors, so to speak, until they in their turn perish and add their skeletons to the growing structure. ”

“ Sometimes the animal retreating into its home leaves the tips of its coral cell white; but all these living corals are something very different from the dead, white-bleached things we see in our museums. ”

“ A mast is sunk at the side of the boat, and the diver descends this; gathering the sponges found near the bottom of the pole.
Next in order of fishing in deep sea, comes coral fishing. The ancients believed that the coral was a plant, but it is now known that the coral is constructed by a family of polyps living together, and constituting a polypidom. It abounds in the waters of the Mediterranean where upon rocky beds like a submarine forest, the red coral, the most brilliant and celebrated of all coral, grows at various depths, rarely less than five fathoms, or more than one hundred. ”

“ Think of coral-animals as being referred to as shapeless worms that "writhe and shrink their tortuous bodies to grotesque dimensions"! These deep-sea builders manufacture or secrete from their own bodies the coral substance out of which the great reefs are built. It is a part of their life work and nature, as a flower produces its own colours and shapes ”

“ Besides the more extended knowledge of the wonderful formation of the animated coral stocks, there have been gradually established more accurate views respecting the influence exercised by corals on other departments of Nature,—on the elevation of groups of low islands above the level of the sea,—on the migrations of land-plants and the successive extension of the domains of particular Floras,—and, lastly, in some parts of the ocean, on the diffusion of races of men, and the spread of particular languages. ”

“ Coral growth will be most luxuriant in the shallow water, and the first stage of our reef will be a mound of coral of the shape shewn in section by the dotted area. Between E and D this comes to the surface, and the corals, projecting above the water at lowest spring tides, are killed at the top, so that E to D becomes an almost flat surface of dead corals, some of which may, however, be still living where their bases are immersed in clear sea-water. ”

“ Coral being beautiful in form and colour, is sought after for purposes of ornament; and its fishery or gathering gives employment to many persons in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean, and other places. In the Straits of Messina, the rocks which yield coral are from about 350 to 650 feet below the surface of the water. The coral here grows to about the height or length of twelve inches, and requires eight or ten years to come to perfection. ”

“ As the lagoons of atolls are sometimes even more than forty fathoms deep, it must, also, be assumed on this view, that at a depth at which the waves do not break, the coral grows more vigorously on the edges of a bank than on its central part ”

“ Does it live and breathe? It is one of the curious, mysterious things of the ocean about which Folks have written and studied, and the wise ones say that coral is neither insect nor fish, but a kind of sea-animal, that lives in both deep and shallow waters. In the beginning it appears to be a tiny sea-creature, like a small, fleshy bag, with a mouth at one end, while with the other it clings to some object, almost always a rock. ”