Only remember that you must re-clothe each of
those exquisite forms with a coating of live jelly of some delicate
hue, and put back into every one of the thousand cells its living
flower; and into the beds, or rather banks, of the salt-water flower
garden, the gaudiest of shell-less sea-anemones, such as we have on
our coasts, rooted in the cracks, and live shells and sea-slugs, as
gaudy as they, crawling about, with fifty other forms of fantastic
and exuberant life. You must not overlook, too, the fish, especially
the parrot-fish, some of them of the gaudiest colours, who spend
their lives in browsing on the live coral, with strong clipping and
grinding teeth, just as a cow browses the grass, keeping the animal
matter, and throwing away the lime in the form of an impalpable white
mud, which fills up the interstices in the coral beds.
The bottom, just outside the reef, is covered with that mud, mixed
with more lime-mud, which the surge wears off the reef; and if you
have, as you should have, a dredge on board, and try a haul of that
mud as you row home, you may find, but not always, animal forms
rooted in it, which will delight the soul of a scientific man. One,
I hope, would be some sort of Terebratula, or shell akin to it. You
would probably think it a cockle: but you would be wrong.
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