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As I have said, they were for a long time supposed, notwithstanding these differences, to be Polyps, and I had shared in this opinion, till, during the winter of 1857, while pursuing my investigations on the Coral Reefs of Florida, one of these Millepores revealed itself to me in its true character of Acaleph.
Among the corals, the palaeozoic 'Tabulata' are constructed on precisely the same type as the modern millepores; and if we turn to molluscs, the most competent malacologists fail to discover any generic distinction between the 'Craniae', 'Lingulae' and 'Discinae' of the silurian rocks and those which now live.
In this sense the Millepores are in our epoch the representatives of those early Corals called by naturalists Tabulata and Rugosa, distinguished from the Polyp Corals by the horizontal floors, waving in some, straight in others, which divide the body transversely at successive heights through its whole length, and also by the absence of the vertical partitions, extending from top to bottom of each animal, so characteristic of the true Polyps.
I would add here one word on the true nature of the Millepores, long misunderstood by naturalists, because it throws light not only on some interesting facts respecting Coral Reefs, especially the ancient ones, but also because it tells us something of the early inhabitants of the globe, and shows us that a class of Radiates supposed to be missing in that primitive creation had its representatives then as now.
This, however, does not carry them farther back than the Jurassic period, and it is only lately that I have satisfied myself that they not only existed, but were among the most numerous animals in the first representation of organic life. The earliest Corals correspond in certain features of their structure to the Millepores.
But the Coral wall continues its steady progress; for here the lighter kinds set in, the Madrepores, the Millepores, and a great variety of Sea-Fans and Corallines, and the reef is crowned at last with a many-colored shrubbery of low feathery growth.
Among the corals, the palaeozoic 'Tabulata' are constructed on precisely the same type as the modern millepores; and if we turn to molluscs, the most competent malacologists fail to discover any generic distinction between the 'Craniae', 'Lingulae' and 'Discinae' of the silurian rocks and those which now live.
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