William Lower Carter
Published: 2018-03-22
Total Pages: 110
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Excerpt from The Transactions of the Leeds Geological Association, 1892-3, Vol. 8 After some references to the prospects of the Association during the coming winter, Mr. Ingleby said that in looking round for a subject on which to write a paper, his thoughts had naturally turned to the Tropics, in which he had spent some years; and, whilst not professing to have made a special study of corals, he had seen the fringing reefs of Ceylon, and also, from a distance, the mysterious Maldive Islands and the coral reefs of the Red Sea. The coral polype is an animal low down in the scale of life, most nearly allied in our northern clime to the sea anemone, which may be Often seen on our rocky coasts at low water. The body of the sea 'anemone consists of a somewhat cylindrical sac, usually fixed to some solid object at its base, while the mouth occupies the centre of the opposite end of the cylinder, and is surrounded by a circle of tentacles. These anemones are not coral-building animals, but there exist even in our own waters, at considerable depths, similar animals, which have the power of separating the carbonate of lime from sea-water, which they deposit in the lower parts of their bodies to form solid bases by which they become permanently fixed to the sea bottom. These solitary polypes produce large numbers of eggs, which float away and give rise to new individuals. When the animals die, their soft parts decay, and are washed away, leaving the hard skeletons to accumulate, and, in time, to become consolidated into limestone deposits. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.