And what does this exquisitely delicate creature do with its pretty mouth? Alas for fact! It sips no honey-dew, or fruits from paradise. “I put a minute spider, as large as a pin’s head, into the water, pushing it down to the coral. The instant it touched the tip of a tentacle it adhered, and was drawn in with the surrounding tentacles between the plates. With a lens I saw the small mouth slowly open and move over to that side, the lips gaping unsymmetrically; while, with a movement as imperceptible as that of the hour hand of a watch, the tiny prey was carried along between the plates to the corner of the mouth. The mouth, however, moved most, and at length reached the edges of the plates, gradually closed upon the insect, and then returned to its usual place in the centre.” (Gosse.) The fact is, that the Madrepore, like those glorious sea-anemones whose living flowers stud every pool, is by profession a scavenger and a feeder on carrion; and being as useful as he is beautiful, really comes under the rule which he seems at first to break, that handsome is who handsome does. Look now at these tiny saucers of the thinnest ivory, the largest not bigger than a silver threepence, which contain in their centres a milk-white crust of stone, pierced, as you see under the magnifier, into a thousand cells, each with its living architect within. Here are two kinds: in one the tabular cells radiate from the centre, giving it the appearance of a tiny compound flower, daisy or groundsel; in the other they are crossed with waving grooves, giving the whole a peculiar fretted look, even more beautiful than that of the former species. They are Tubulipora patina and Tubulipora hispida; and stay--break off that tiny rough red wart, and look at its cells also under the magnifier: it is Cellepora pumicosa; and now, with the Madrepore, you hold in your hand the principal, at least the commonest, British types of those famed coral insects which in the tropics are the architects of continents and the conquerors of the ocean surge.