It must have been formed at the sea-level, some of it, indeed, under the sea; for here are great masses of madrepore and limestone corals imbedded just as they grew.

They drove a thriving trade among all newcomers: but were somewhat disgusted to find that we, though new to the West Indies, were by no means new to West Indian wares, and therefore not of the same mind as a gentleman and lady who came fresh from the town next day, with nearly a bushel of white branching madrepores, which they were going to carry as coals to Newcastle, six hundred miles down the islands.

When it slept in calm with the sun shining overhead, it was my delight to gaze into the abyss hundreds of feet below me, seeking monsters in the forests of madrepores and coral that were revealed through the limpid blue, enormous serpents that the country folk say leave the forests to dwell in the sea, and there take on frightful forms.

Yet here are no estimates for plants, ferns, mosses, madrepores, extinct fossil species, minerals and rocks.

Among the Anthozoa are the Anemones; among the Polyzoa, are the Madrepores, or Coral-Builders, and many others.

A piece of honeycomb coral (Eschara foliacea) is easily found, and, when well selected and placed in the aquarium, may continue to grow there by the labors of its living infusorial tenants: they are not unworthy rivals of the Madrepores, or deep-sea coral-builders of warmer latitudes.

But the rarer forms of Actinias, Star-fishes, Sepioles, Madrepores, Annelidae, and Zoophytes, of a thousand shapes, live on the bottom, in deep water, and must be captured there.

For a mile it sprawled around a small point of land which thrust out into the sea, and which was guarded by the most wonderful of walls, a reef of madrepore, as solid as granite and sixty feet wide.

It was not radiant, as the term literally taken implies; it seemed rather to retain its wealth,instead of emitting its glorious rays, to curl them back like the fringe of a madrepore, and lie there with redoubled quivering scintillations, a mass of white magnificence, not prismatic, but a vast milky lustre.

No surface of madrepores is more sensitive to a touch than a Cabinet full of Spirits to a chilling syllable of failure.

Calcareous incrustations, including fragments of madrepores, and of shells, cemented by splintery carbonate of lime.

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.

By way of strange contrast in values the pearls were separated from each other by worthless, little, smooth lumps of madrepore, or unfossilized coral.

. Astraeans, Porites, Maeandrinas, and Madrepores were represented by exactly the same Species seventy thousand years ago as they are now.

When the little Polyp Coral, the Astraean or Madrepore, for instance, is born from the egg, it is as free as the Actinia, which remains free all its life.

The Madrepores have also twelve tentacles, but they have a more definite character than those of the Porites, on account of their regular alternation in six smaller and six larger ones; in these also the transverse floors are perfect, but exceedingly delicate.

Another remarkable feature among the Madrepores consists in the prominence of one of the Polyps on the summit of the branches, showing a kind of subordination of the whole community to these larger individuals, and thus sustaining the view expressed above, that the combination of many individuals into a connected community is among Polyps a character of superiority when contrasted with the isolation of the Actiniae;.

Madrepores: twelve tentacles, alternating in six larger and six smaller ones; frequently a larger top animal standing prominent in the whole community, or on the summit of its branches.

Pliocene, \ Miocene, } Madrepores.