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 CORAL 339 descent unnavigable. The banks of most of them are high and steep, and they can be crossed only by means of hanging bridges of rope. The climate is healthy and delightful, and the soil, where capable of cultivation, is productive. Fruit is abundant, especially figs and grapes, but not enough grain is raised for consumption. The province is rich in minerals, particularly in silver and copper. Gold, lead, and quicksilver are also found. The copper mines are numerous and extensively worked. The chief industry is the smelting of this metal, which is carried on to such an extent that much ore is imported from the north of Chili and from Bolivia, in addition to what is mined in the district. Its ports are Coquimbo, Guay- acan, Tongoy, and Totoralillo. II. The capital of the province, also called La Serena, on the river Coquimbo, not far from its mouth, 255 m. N. N. W. of Santiago ; lat. 29 54' S., Ion. 71 16' W. ; pop. about 15,000. The city is regularly built, with streets generally at right angles, and in the S. part there is a large plaza. The houses, which are mostly of one story, stand apart surrounded by gardens. Among the principal buildings are several churches and convents, a public school, and a hospital. It has also water and gas works. It is a bish- op's see. The town was founded in 1542, by Francisco de Aguirre, who called it La Serena from his native town in Spain. The port of Coquimbo, which is several miles distant on the bay, is one of the best harbors of Chili. It is spacious and safe in all seasons, and, notwith- standing the scarcity of wood and water, is much frequented. The exports are chiefly copper in bars, ingots, regulus, and ores, some silver and cobalt, and hides. The imports are mostly coal, mining materials, and provisions. CORAL (Gr. nopdMtov ; Lat. coralium, cura- lium, or corallum). The derivation and use of this term are discussed by Theophrastus in his work on plants. SucK were these stony pro- ducts of the ocean naturally believed to be, from their growth resembling that of the pro- ductions of the garden. Imitating the forms of trees and flowering shrubs, they rivalled them in gracefulness and delicacy ; and the brilliant hues of the blossoms that crowned them made permanently beautiful these gardens in the depths of the sea. And when at last Peyson- nel, in an elaborate memoir sent to the royal society in 1751, supported the opinion (first advanced by the Neapolitan naturalist Fer- rante Imperato in 1599) that the coral blos- soms, les fleurs du corail (so described in 1706 by Marsigli), belonged to the animal and not to the vegetable kingdom, his views met with a cool reception among naturalists, and were pronounced even by Re'aumur too absurd to be discussed. The power of vegetation to pro- duce stately forests and the minutest plants was familiar to naturalists. To ascribe still greater power and as elaborate skill to "poor, helpless, jelly-like animals," seemed like an in- sulting demand upon their credulity. The controversy was continued through the greater part of the last century. The coral animals were shown in form resembling blossoms, sending forth their petal-like tentacles in se- ries around the mouth, and drawing into this their prey. Still Linnaeus would admit their possession only of a nature intermediate be- tween plants and animals, and the word zoo- phyte (Gr. C&GV, animal, and pfan;, to grow like a plant) was applied by him to the organic bod- ies, with reference to their supposed relation to both kingdoms. The word is still in use with naturalists as a distinctive term for the division of animals in which the sponges are included. The whole compound animal mass produced by budding is called by Prof. J. D. Dana a zoothome (Gr. ov, animal, and 6u/^6^ a heap), and the single animal is called by him a polyp. Coral is the stony frame which be- longs to these animals, as a skeleton belongs to an individual of the higher orders of the animal kingdom. It is called by Prof. Dana the coral- lum, and the coral of a single polyp in the mass is called a corallet. It is formed within the FIG. 1. Coral Animals (Astraea pallida). mass of them by animal secretion, each indi- vidual adding to the common structure, not by actual effort directed to this purpose, but by the involuntary secretion of calcareous matter. Hence it will be seen that corals are not, as formerly supposed, the products of the labor of the coral animals, but are the results of a growth analogous to that of the bones in other animals. A single polyp of the genus astrcea (see fig. 1), for instance, has a disk above sur- rounded with tentacles, like the actinia or sea anemone, to which it is closely allied; the mouth at the centre of the disk opens into a stomach, and is the passage for the food and for the exit of refuse matters. Below and around the stomach space is divided radi- ately by a series of pairs of fleshy plates, the larger of which extend from 'the stomach to the sides of the polyp. The coral is secreted between the plates of these several pairs, as well as through the tissues; and hence comee the radiate character of the interior of the cells over the surface of a coral, that is, the star-like interior of each corallet. The mate- rial of the coral is carbonate of lime, or the same that constitutes limestone, and it is taken by the polyp from the sea water or from its