Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/252

 and about fifteen fathoms down. This ground was very different from that which we had first met with beneath the Pacific Ocean. Here was no fine sand, no submarine prairies nor forests. I immediately recognised that wonderful region of which Captain Nemo did the honours. It was the Kingdom of Coral.

In the branch of zoophytes, and in the class of alayonnares, we remarked the order of gorgonares, which includes the three groups of gorgonians, the insidians, and the corallines. It is to the last named that the coral is attributed—a curious substance, which has been classed by turns in the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms. A remedy with the ancients, an ornament in modern days, it was only in 1694 that Peysonnel classed it definitely in the animal kingdom.

Coral is a conglomeration of animalcules, united on a natural, brittle, and stony polypary. These polypes have a single generator, which produces them by a budding process; they have a separate existence, while participating in a common life. It is a kind of natural solecism. I had read the latest works upon this curious zoophyte which mineralises itself in growing like a tree, following the very just observation of naturalists, and nothing could be more interesting to me than a visit to one of these petrified forests which nature has planted at the bottom of the sea.

The Rumhkorff apparatus were set going, and we followed a coral bank in course of formation, which in time will form a barrier to this part of the Indian Ocean. The way was by the side of inextricable thickets, formed by the entanglement of the branches which covered the little starry flowers with white rays, only, inverse to the