our earth; for these gorgeous flower-like forms are living animal organisms.

2. Closely allied to the sea anemones are the coral polyps. They are beautiful, and delicately So. One writer on Ocean Life states that the corallines are unsurpassed in beauty. He also asserts that it is hardly an exaggeration to say that their tints and hues, as seen through two or three fathoms of clear water, surpass those of the rainbow.

3. Corals require pure sea-water and warmth. Therefore they may not be found where freshwater streams mingle with the ocean's waters, or where currents are carrying sediment, or on tropical shores that are bathed by Arctic currents. They also require a rock bottom on which they may fasten. It is believed that they cannot live at a greater depth than twenty or thirty fathoms.

4. These coral polyps live in extensive colonies. The coral structures built by them have various forms. Some are branched, like tree-forms; others are brain-like, or chain-like; some appear as delicate fans or wave with the passing currents as frail and graceful feather-forms.

5. But these strange little creatures have been instruments to add to the prosperity of man, as well as to adorn the ocean depths. For the great coral reefs of the Pacific and Indian Oceans have

been upbuilt by them, and many groups of islands and solitary islets in these two great oceans are built entirely of coral.

6. Coral reefs are named according to their relations to the shore. Fringing reefs lie close to the shores of islands and continents, and are sometimes called shore-reefs. Barrier reefs, at some distance from the shore, rise from a greater ocean depth and stretch like a barrier along the coast. An atoll is a circular reef surrounding a body of

7. Atolls were once the boundary line of an enclosed island that subsided, or sank, after the upbuilding of the encircling reef. Many of the rocky and picturesque islands of the Pacific lie

within these encircling reefs. A strip of rich land generally surrounds the base of the mountains and a girdle of palm trees separates the rugged rocks from the calm, blue water from which they rise.

8. The reef-builders are the oldest monument builders. Sturdy rocks break and crumble away, but the coral reefs stand against the continual thunder of the waves, and the work of the tiny coral polyps checks the force of the mighty

breakers.

9. Perhaps you have sometimes heard the coral producers called "coral insects." This is a mistake they belong to the plantlike animals, being much lower than insects in the scale of life. They are only soft-bodied organisms which have power to secrete lime and some other hard substances that form coral.

10. The body of a coral polyp consists of a cylindrical skin with an inside sac, which proves to be its stomach. The top is bordered by threadlike appendages or tentacles, which seek and draw the food into the sac or stomach. When the tentacles are opened out the creature has a flowerlike appearance.

11. The lower end of the polyp is fastened to the stony substance. The limy substance that forms the coral is secreted between the stomach and the outer skin of the polyp. The hard or

lower end and the soft or upper end of the little coral producer are inseparably joined when the animal is in a healthy condition.

12. In very early life the polyps are free and move about in the water, but this soon ends and the little animal fixes itself to the stony structure built by its ancestors, after which it is powerless to detach itself. The cells of the coral colony are not like houses into which the polyps may come and go at pleasure, but part and parcel of the creature itself.

13. Coral polyps do not collect from any external source the material used in forming coral, more than that they select from the water that which sustains their lives and is made by natural processes into coral. But the steady work, day and night, of myriads of these creatures serves to check the proud breakers and furnishes the otherwise barren ocean expanse with rich and beautiful islands.

1. Doubtless you have all heard the story of Neptune, the sea-god, and his wonderful palace in the ocean depths. Deep down under the tossing waves, on the floor of the ocean, it stood, surrounded by the wonders of the sea and guarded by water nymphs with their attendant dolphins.

2. The walls of Neptune's palace were made of pink sea shells, each one of which was a setting for a great white pearl. The roof was of magnificent coral, and the floor was covered with matchless sea mosses and glistening sands. The houses of the sea nymphs were all more beautiful than any upon the earth. The waves made music for these sprites, lulling them to sleep or accompanying them in their frolic amid the dashing spray. 3. Coral was called by the Greeks, "The Daughter of the Sea." Doubtless this was in appreciation of its beauty, but they seemed to know little of its origin or the strange plant

animals that are necessary to its existence. Pro