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The red coral polype perches upon the sea bottom, it then grows up into a sort of stem, and out of that stem there grow branches, each of which has its own polypes; and thus you have a kind of tree formed, every branch of the tree terminated by its polype. It is a tree, but at the end of the branches there are open mouths of polypes instead of flowers.
"I was angry, and didn't want to own that I was wrong; so I insisted that it wasn't a real island, without people on it. 'Wait a little longer, answered the polypes; and went on, building broader and broader foundations. I flounced away in a rage, and didn't go back for a great while.
As dear Harry used to say, even the polypes in aristocratic useless sponges at the sea-bottom won't have anything to say to the sponges of commerce. I'm sure nobody I could meet in a governess's place could possibly be worse in that respect than poor old Miss Catherine Luttrell.
This is a great mass of madrepore, and in the living state every one of the ends of these branches was terminated by a beautiful little polype, like a sea anemone, and all the skeleton was covered by a soft body which united the polypes together.
The progress of discovery, since Réaumur's time, has made us very completely acquainted with the structure and habits of all these polypes.
These animals, their habits, their miraculous transformations, might give many an hour's quiet amusement to an invalid, laid on a sofa, or imprisoned in a sick-room, and debarred from reading, unless by some such means, any page of that great green book outside, whose pen is the finger of God, whose covers are the fire kingdoms and the star kingdoms, and its leaves the heather-bells, and the polypes of the sea, and the gnats above the summer stream.
They have a habit of growing together in masses in the same place; they are what we call "gregarious" things; and the consequence of this is, that as they die and leave their skeletons, those skeletons form a considerable solid aggregation at the bottom of the sea, and other polypes perch upon them, and begin building upon them, and so by degrees a great mass is formed.
That was the first point to make clear. The second point to deal with was if the polypes cannot have built there while the level of the sea has remained stationary, then one of two things must have happened either the sea has gone up, or the land has gone down. There is no escape from one of these two alternatives.
They have a habit of growing together in masses in the same place; they are what we call "gregarious" things; and the consequence of this is, that as they die and leave their skeletons, those skeletons form a considerable solid aggregation at the bottom of the sea, and other polypes perch upon them, and begin building upon them, and so by degrees a great mass is formed.
A plant may throw off bulbs, but these, sooner or later, give rise to seeds or spores, which develop into the original form. A polype may give rise to Medusae, or a pluteus to an Echinoderm, but the Medusa and the Echinoderm give rise to eggs which produce polypes or glutei, and they are therefore only stages in the cycle of life of the species.
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