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Their tentacles are lobed all around the margin, and are much more complicated in structure than those of the preceding Polyps. According to the relative complication of their structure, these animals are classified in the following order: Halcyonoids: eight tentacles in pairs, lobed around the margin; always combined in large communities, some of which are free and movable like single animals.
This is one of the lower group of Radiates, known as Hydroids, and long believed to be Polyps, from their mode of living in communities and reproducing their kind by budding, after the fashion of Corals.
The reef-building coral must not be confounded with the precious, or red, coral, which flourishes in a muddy sea-bottom and is found chiefly in the Mediterranean Sea. When alive and in the water, coral polyps present a variety of beautiful forms and colors.
Allowing for the unfortunate slip of the pen by which "batrachians" are substituted for "fresh-water polyps," how can we fail to admire the severity of the scientific method employed in reaching these interesting conclusions? But the King of Serendib must die, nor will the relentless scythe of Time spare our Etherians, with all their exalted attributes.
Fishes, though most attractive, must be put in last; for as they are of the highest vitality, so they require the most oxygen and food, and hence should not be trusted until everything in the tank is well a-going. The first tenants should be the hardy varieties of the Sea-Anemones, or Actiniae, which are Polyps, of the class Radiata.
In some very rare cases, where the seashore is bordered by coral reefs, as it is in parts of southern Florida, and the strand is made up of limestone bits derived from the hard parts which the polyps secrete, small dunes are made of limy material.
The sun's rays hit the surface of the waves at a fairly oblique angle, decomposing by refraction as though passing through a prism; and when this light came in contact with flowers, rocks, buds, seashells, and polyps, the edges of these objects were shaded with all seven hues of the solar spectrum.
Yet "crabs or lobsters, worms, cuttle-fish, snails, jelly-fish, star-fish, oysters, the polyps lived contemporaneously with the first known vertebrate animals that ever came into being all as clearly defined by unmistakable ordinal or special characters as they are at the present moment." The foot of the horse is considered by zoölogists as "one of the most beautiful contrivances in nature."
I should add, that, beside the Polyps and the Acalephs, Mollusks also have their representatives among the Corals.
These were marine polyps, which grow, like those in fresh water, one upon another, but each in its own crusty cell; and like the buds of the oak, these buds of the stony tree form each its special deposit, which it bequeaths in dying to the general mass.
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