I hope by this time our ingenious botanical friends, whom we could not persuade to part with these beautiful sea-productions from the vegetable kingdom, are thoroughly convinced, that this mealy, friable, or calcarious covering, full of starry cells, which we are sure to find covering all the recent red corals and keratophyta, is not a mere blight of insects, common to the sea vegetables as well as land ones, which they have formerly insisted on; but that they will consider this covering, for the future, as proper and necessary for the well-being of these little animals, as they do at present hair and wool for beasts, feathers and down for birds, and scales and slime for fishes. This red coral is mentioned by Rumphius, in his _Herbarium Amboinense_, Vol. vi. Tab. 85. p. 264, but, as the figure he has given, is not sufficient to demonstrate its tubular texture and animal structure, I have had it more accurately drawn; and those parts in particular magnified, which may tend to illustrate the foregoing description. He mentions, that it is in great esteem with them, on account of its beautiful figure; but would be much more so, if it was not for the great difficulty they find in preserving the smallest twigs from falling off; which is the reason, I suppose, that the specimen is not more complete. Lastly, he tells us, that it is used by the inhabitants of the Spice-islands as a principal ingredient in their medicines to expel poison: as also, that they have it in great esteem on account of its excellent diuretic quality. Upon examining this coral in the microscope, I observed, that the outside tubes of the stem were chiefly stony, but that the inward parts were composed of as many divisions of spongy tubes, as there were of stony ones. This I find arises from the smaller ramifications, which being spongy at the knobs, and stony in the spaces between them, are inclosed and united together into one common mass during the growth of this coral; so that both the soft and hard parts together make up the inside of its trunk or stem. When we examine minutely the two parts, that compose the branches, we find, that the knobs consist of little sponge-like tubes interwoven together, as they appear magnified at _Fig._ D; and the shank or part between the knobs is composed of stony tubes, that are more erect (_See the piece magnified at_ E): these tubes appear to be branched from the lateral holes at FF. The Fig. E likewise shews the appearance of the tubes on the surface of the main stem. The radiated openings in the little wart-like figures on the surface of the branches are guarded by eight pointed valves, as magnified at _Fig._ I.: these inclose the heads of the polype, one of which is figured at K.