Identifier: naturalhistoryo00tenn (find matches)
Title: Natural history of animals;
Year: 1895 (1890s)
Authors: Tenney, Sanborn, 1827-1877 Tenney, Abby Amy Gove, 1836-
Subjects: Zoology
Publisher: New York, Cincinnati (etc.) American book company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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coral is wholly inside of the animals, and it is onlywhen the Polyps die, wither, and disappear that wesee the solid coral itself. Polyps grow in various andmost wonderful and beautiful forms, imitating almostall kinds of vegetation, as lichens, fungi, mosses, ferns,grasses, herbs, shrubs and trees. A hundred yearsago, or more, they were thought to be plants, and eventhe great naturalist, Linnaeus, regarded them as plant-animals, that is, partaking of the character of bothplants and animals; even now they are often calledZoophytes, a word which means animal-plants, al-though they are in no way related to plants. Thecolors of these wonderful animals of the sea are asbeautiful and almost as varied as their forms; andsome of the Polyp communities equal, in splendorof colors, the most beautiful flower gardens of theland. Sea-pens, G-orgonias, etc., or Alcyonaria. These are Polyps which have eight long fringed orlobed tentacles, around a narrow disk, Figures 488- 256 CCELENTERATES: POLYPS.
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Fig-493—Red Coral. Fig. 494. — Primnoa. Fig.495.—Organ-pipe. ALCYONARIA. 257 490, and which form compound clusters or commu-nities by budding. The Sea-pens and Renillas arePolyps which are arranged on a more or less ex-panded disk, which is connected with a sort of stemor peduncle, by means of which the community maymove about or fix itself in the sand or mud. TheSea-pens are so called from their resemblance toa quill. The Renilla, Figure 488, found on the coastof the Southern States and of South America, lookslike a broad leaf attached to its leaf-stalk; and whenthe purple disk is covered with the expanded Polyps,as seen in the cut, it is a very beautiful object. Theform of a separate Polyp is shown in Figure 489. The Gorgonias abound in tropical seas, but somekinds are also found in temperate regions. The formsare exceedingly various, Figures 490-494, and manyof them are very delicate and beautiful, often bearinga very close resemblance to plants ; in all, however, thePolyps a

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