The coral-stone is seen and admired on centre-tables and in jewelry, but this is really the least pleasing beauty in the organism. The animal, subjected to exposure, is a brown mucus that dissipates in the sun and air, but clothed in its native element this glutinous substance is instinct with radiant life, the bodies being rose-color and the arms a pure white. Sometimes they grow in clusters and corymbs, gleaming with a pure, translucent color that fluctuates and changes in the light Like colors of a shell, That keep the hue and polish of the wave. Our searcher found one unexpected verification of the story in Exodus. The passage in the Bible does not leave altogether in mystery the natural means by which the transit was effected. We are told of the strong east wind and the wall of waters. At the point near Suez a shoal extends quite across the sea. For several days this wind had borne back the shallow waters, descending as it did from the rugged mountain-slopes, and opening or sweeping back the deep as it were. Then the tide came, thrust forward in accumulated volume, until it made a real wall of waters that stood up in a huge crested, angry foam. It was sufficiently like to cause the explorer to apprehend the possibility of finding Pharaoh by traveling the same watery road. Another question that has puzzled scholars found a solution in the American's observation. Smith's _Bible Dictionary_ discusses learnedly the name of this curious gulf, written [Greek: ae eruthra thalassa] in the Septuagint. The _Dictionary_ surmises that the name was derived from the red western mountains, red coral zoophytes, etc., and appears to give little weight to the real and natural reason which came under our American's notice. On one occasion the diver observed, while under sea, that the curious wavering shadows, which cross the lustrous golden floor like Frauenhofer's lines on the spectrum, began to change and lose themselves. A purple glory of intermingled colors darkened the violet curtains of the sea-chambers, reddening all glints and tinges with an angry fire. Instead of that lustrous, golden firmament, the thallassphere darkened to crimson and opal. The walls grew purple, the floor as red as blood: the deep itself was purpled with the venous hue of deoxidized life-currents.