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Updated: June 23, 2025
This very feather-star, soon after it is born, grows a tiny stalk, by which it holds on to corallines and sea-weeds; and it is not till afterwards that it breaks loose from that stalk, and swims away freely into the wide water. And in foreign seas there are several star-fish still who grow on stalks all their lives, as this fossil one did.
Thus he describes it: "The number of living creatures of all orders, whose existence entirely depends on the kelp, is wonderful. A great volume might be written describing the inhabitants of one of these beds of seaweed. Almost all the leaves, excepting those that float on the surface, are so thickly encrusted with corallines as to be of a white colour.
It follows that, after the upper valve of the Crania fell off, the surface of the attached valve must have remained exposed long enough to allow of the growth of the whole corraline, since corallines do not live imbedded in mud.
"Young lady," he said, "if you are looking for corallines, you can't do better than ask your papa some fine afternoon, to drive you as far as Sheldon, and you'll find a sight of fine weeds there, as I know, for my boy, my poor boy I lost, I mean," said he, again touching the rusty crape on his hat, "my boy was very curious in those things, and had quite a museum of 'em at home."
The young cells at the end of the branches of these corallines contain quite immature polypi, yet the vulture-heads attached to them, though small, are in every respect perfect. When the polypus was removed by a needle from any of the cells, these organs did not appear in the least affected.
Such are the corals; those corallines which are called Polyzoa; those creatures which fabricate the lamp-shells, and are called Brachiopoda; the pearly Nautilus, and all animals allied to it; and all the forms of sea-urchins and star-fishes.
The Graces wreathed its circumference with garlands of sea-weed, shells, and corallines, and the mimic sea was complete.
Such are the corals; those corallines which are called Polyzoa; those creatures which fabricate the lamp-shells, and are called Brachiopoda; the pearly Nautilus, and all animals allied to it; and all the forms of sea-urchins and star-fishes.
It is, for instance, an astonishing fact that a delicate branching coralline, studded with polypi, and attached to a submarine rock, should produce, first by budding and then by transverse division, a host of huge floating jelly-fishes; and that these should produce eggs, from which are hatched swimming animalcules, which attach themselves to rocks and become developed into branching corallines; and so on in an endless cycle.
The beauty of the madrepores and corallines, of which the finest specimens are found in the recesses of the Bay of Tappanuli, is not to be surpassed in any country. Of these a superb collection is in the possession of Mr. In the same volume is also a Paper by Mr.
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