sea and grows up again into the form and condition of its parents. So that if you suppose a single polype of this kind settled upon the bottom of the sea, it may by these various methods--that is to say, by cutting itself in two, which we call "fission," or by budding; or by sending out these swimming embryos,--multiply itself to an enormous extent, and give rise to thousands, or millions, of progeny in a comparatively short time; and these thousands, or millions, of progeny may cover a very large surface of the sea bottom; in fact, you will readily perceive that, give them time, and there is no limit to the surface which they may cover. Having understood thus far the general nature of these polypes, which are the fabricators both of the red and white coral, let us consider a little more particularly how the skeletons of the red coral and of the white coral are formed. The red coral polype perches upon the sea bottom, it then grows up into a sort of stem, and out of that stem there grow branches, each of which has its own polypes; and thus you have a kind of tree formed, every branch of the tree terminated by its polype. It is a tree, but at the end of the branches there are open mouths of polypes instead of flowers. Thus there is a common soft body connecting the whole, and as it grows up the soft body deposits in its interior a quantity of carbonate of lime, which acquires a beautiful red or flesh colour, and forms a kind of stem running through the whole, and it is that stem which is the red coral. The red coral grows principally at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, at very great depths, and the coral fishers, who are very adventurous seamen, take their drag nets, of a peculiar kind, roughly made, but efficient for their purpose, and drag them along the bottom of the sea to catch the branches of the red coral, which become entangled and are thus brought up to the surface. They are then allowed to putrefy, in order to get rid of the animal matter, and the red coral is the skeleton that is left.