It is a tree, but at the end of the branches there are open
mouths of polypes instead of flowers. Thus there is a common soft body
connecting the whole, and as it grows up the soft body deposits in its
interior a quantity of carbonate of lime, which acquires a beautiful
red or flesh colour, and forms a kind of stem running through the whole,
and it is that stem which is the red coral. The red coral grows
principally at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, at very great
depths, and the coral fishers, who are very adventurous seamen, take
their drag nets, of a peculiar kind, roughly made, but efficient for
their purpose, and drag them along the bottom of the sea to catch the
branches of the red coral, which become entangled and are thus brought
up to the surface. They are then allowed to putrefy, in order to get
rid of the animal matter, and the red coral is the skeleton that is
left.
In the case of the white coral, the skeleton is more complete. In the
red coral, the skeleton belongs to the whole; in the white coral there
is a special skeleton for every one of these polypes in addition to
that for the whole body.
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