zoological sense, cousins, each of them being formed by the same kind
of animals in what is substantially the same way. Each of these bodies
is, in fact, the hard skeleton of a very curious and a very simple
animal, more comparable to the bones of such animals as ourselves than
to the shells of oysters or creatures of that kind; for it is the
hardening of the internal tissue of the creature, of its internal
substance, by the deposit in the body of a material which is exceedingly
common, not only in fresh but in sea water, and which is specially
abundant in those waters which we know as "hard," those waters, for
example, which leave a "fur" upon the bottom of a tea-kettle. This
"fur" is carbonate of lime, the same sort of substance as limestone and
chalk. That material is contained in solution in sea water, and it is
out of the sea water in which these coral creatures live that they get
the lime which is needed for the forming of their hard skeleton.

But now what manner of creatures are these which form these hard
skeletons? I dare say that in these days of keeping aquaria, of
locomotion to the sea-side, most of those whom I am addressing may have
seen one of those creatures which used to be known as the "sea
anemone," receiving that name on account of its general resemblance, in
a rough sort of way, to the flower which is known as the "anemone"; but
being a thing which lives in the sea, it was qualified as the "sea
anemone." Well, then, you must suppose a body shaped like a short
cylinder, the top cut off, and in the top a hole rather oval than round.
All round this aperture, which is the mouth, imagine that there are
placed a number of feelers forming a circle. The cavity of the mouth
leads into a sort of stomach, which is very unlike those of the higher
animals, in the circumstance that it opens at the lower end into a
cavity of the body, and all the digested matter, converted into
nourishment, is thus distributed through the rest of the body. That is