e des
Insectes;" and, from this time forth, Peyssonel's doctrine that
corals are the work of animal organisms has been part of the body of
established scientific truth.

Peyssonel, in the extract from his memoir already cited, compares the
flower-like animal of the coral to a "poulpe," which is the French
form of the name "polypus,"--"the many-footed,"--which the ancient
naturalists gave to the soft-bodied cuttlefishes, which, like the coral
animal, have eight arms, or tentacles, disposed around a central mouth.
Reaumur, admitting the analogy indicated by Peyssonel, gave the name
of polypes, not only to the sea-anemone, the coral animal, and the
fresh-water Hydra, but to what are now known as the Polyzoa, and he
termed the skeleton which they fabricate a "polypier," or "polypidom."

The progress of discovery, since Reaumur's time, has made us very
completely acquainted with the structure and habits of all these
polypes. We know that, among the sea-anemones and coral-forming animals,
each poylpe has a mouth leading to a stomach, which is open at its inner
end, and thus communicates freely with the general cavity of the body;
that the tentacles placed round the mouth are hollow, and that they
perform the part of arms in seizing and capturing prey. It is known that
many of these creatures are capable of being multiplied by artificial
division, the divided halves growing, after a time, into complete and
separate animals; and that many are able to perform a very similar
process naturally, in such a manner that one polype may, by repeated
incomplete divisions, give rise to a sort of sheet, or turf, formed by
innumerable connected, and yet independent, descendants. Or, what is
still more common, a polype may throw out buds, which are converted into
polypes, or branches bearing polypes, until a tree-like mass, sometimes
of very considerable size, is formed.

This is what happens in the case of the red coral of commerce. A minute
polype, fixed to the rocky bottom of the deep sea, grows up into a
branched trunk. The end of every branch and twig is terminated by
a polype; and all the polypes are connected together by a fleshy
substance, traversed by innumerable canals which place each polype in
communication with every other, and carry nourishment to the substance
of the supporting stem. It is a sort of natural cooperative store,
every polype helping the whole, at the same time as it helps itself. The
interior of the stem, like