What is it? a learned man
Could give it a clumsy name.
Let him name it who can,

The beauty would be the same.

The tiny shell is forlorn,

Void of the little living will
That made it stir on the shore.
Did he stand at the diamond door
Of his house in a rainbow frill?
Did he push, when he was uncurled,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Through his dim water world?

Slight, to be crushed with a tap
Of my finger-nail on the sand!
Small, but a work divine!
Frail, but of force to withstand,
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract seas that snap
The three-decker's oaken spine
Athwart the ledges of rock,
Here on the Breton strand!

ALFRED TENNYSON

WHERE

CORALS AND CORAL REEFS

"Whatever mine ears can hear,

Whatever mine eyes can see,

In Nature so bright with beauty and light
Has a message of love for me."

HEREVER we look in this great, wide, beautiful, wonderful world, we can find glories unspeakable, marvelous things to admire and to enjoy. Here is this bit of coral. What is it and where does it come from?

Coral is, next to the pearl, the most precious jewel of the sea. It is very beautiful and is valuable for ornaments. Even from the most ancient times it has been used for this purpose. In the Bible, we find it mentioned in connection with emeralds and other precious stones, and we are told by the old writer Pliny that weapons and costly vessels were embellished with branches of this beautiful substance.

Red coral is obtained chiefly from the Mediterranean Sea. In the adjoining countries, especially in Southern Italy, the business of gathering and culling it and making it into ornaments forms a flourishing and important industry. It is still a favorite material for necklaces and other forms of jewelry.

Coral is drawn up from the sea in nets by divers or by fishermen. These nets are attached to a vessel and lowered over the rocks where the coral branches are found. Then the boatmen hoist the sails, and as the vessel slowly drifts

before the wind, the choice treasures are collected and dragged up from their home in the deep sea.

And what is this beautiful material? It is a solid structure of carbonate of lime, and is made in a very curious and wonderful way by tiny creatures called polyps. As we know, all animals and plants are able to appropriate from the water or the air in which they live, whatever properties they need for their own life and growth. So the little coral polyps take up lime from the sea water and use it in making their wonderful building.

Great numbers of these tiny beings living in colonies and working together, deposit within their bodies minute particles of lime. It hardens into a solid frame or skeleton, and this is the beautiful coral that we admire so much.

In early life the coral polyp has a soft transparent body like a lump of jelly. Sometimes it swims around freely in the water, but it soon attaches itself to the ground or perhaps to a rock, and henceforth remains fixed to that place. Its form immediately changes, becoming star-shaped, and tentacles or arms appear, which bring to its mouth bits of food and particles of lime.

From each ray-like point of its body another tiny polyp soon appears, like another little star. Some of these drop off into the water and some remain and begin to build. Again from these tiny star points, other polyps start forth, and so as time goes on, millions upon millions are added to the colony, and the building of the busy little architects grows larger and larger.

There are several kinds of coral, and all are very curious and beautiful. Sometimes the stony substance is rounded in form with a rough wrinkled surface, sometimes it is in shapes of branching shrubs or trees, sometimes it is fanshaped.

But whatever the form, the coral which we see in museums is only the limestone structure, very different in appearance from the coral gardens in the sea. As we look down through the clear water at these wonderful sea gardens they do indeed present a lovely and fairylike scene.

The tentacles of the little polyps are of many bright colors, and each one of the millions of beings composing the community is enveloped in a perfect wreath of them. When all these tiny tentacles, white or green or rose-colored, are fully expanded, moving about in the water, they look like a bed of the most brilliant flowers.

Indeed, for a long time it was supposed that they really were flowers. Learned men, notwithstanding all their research and careful observation, have made many mistakes in trying to understand these marvelous little creatures. But at last, by long and patient study with the aid of the microscope, their real nature has been discovered. They belong to the same class of animals as the lovely sea anemones, which indeed are sometimes called the "cousins of the coral."

The work of all kinds of coral polyps is very interesting, but that of the reef-building species fills us with the greatest wonder. It seems absolutely impossible that those mighty