Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore

Another species of Madrepore {121} was discovered on our Devon coast by Mr. Gosse, more gaudy, though not so delicate in hue as our Caryophyllia. Mr. Gosse’s locality, for this and numberless other curiosities, is Ilfracombe, on the north coast of Devon. My specimens came from Lundy Island, in the mouth of the Bristol Channel, or more properly from that curious “Rat Island” to the south of it, where still lingers the black long-tailed English rat, exterminated everywhere else by his sturdier brown cousin of the Hanoverian dynasty. Look, now, at these tiny saucers of the thinnest ivory, the largest not bigger than a silver threepence, which contain in their centres a milk-white crust of stone, pierced, as you see under the magnifier, into a thousand cells, each with its living architect within. Here are two kinds: in one the tubular cells radiate from the centre, giving it the appearance of a tiny compound flower, daisy or groundsel; in the other they are crossed with waving grooves, giving the whole a peculiar fretted look, even more beautiful than that of the former species. They are Tubulipora patina and Tubulipora hispida;— and stay— break off that tiny rough red wart, and look at its cells also under the magnifier: it is Cellepora pumicosa; and now, with the Madrepore, you hold in your hand the principal, at least the commonest, British types of those famed coral insects, which in the tropics are the architects of continents, and the conquerors of the ocean surge. All the world, since the publication of Darwin’s delightful “Voyage of the Beagle,”‘ and of Williams’ “Missionary Enterprises,” knows, or ought to know, enough about them: for those who do not, there are a few pages in the beginning of Dr. Landsborough’s “British Zoophytes,” well worth perusal.