[109]
ON CORAL AND CORAL REEFS [110]
The marine productions which are commonly known by the names of "Corals"
and "Corallines," were thought by the ancients to be sea-weeds, which
had the singular property of becoming hard and solid, when they were
fished up from their native depths and came into contact with the air.
"Sic et curalium, quo primum contigit auras Tempore durescit: mollis
fuit herba sub undis,"[111]
says Ovid (Metam. xv); and it was not until the seventeenth century that
Boccone [112] was emboldened, by personal experience of the facts, to
declare that the holders of this belief were no better than "idiots,"
who had been misled by the softness of the outer coat of the living red
coral to imagine that it was soft all through.
Messer Boccone's strong epithet is probably undeserved, as the notion he
controverts, in all likelihood, arose merely from the misinterpretation
of the strictly true statement which any coral fisherman would make to
a curious inquirer; namely, that the outside coat of the red coral is
quite soft when it is taken out of the sea. At any rate, he did good
service by eliminating this much error from the current notions about
coral. But the belief that corals are plants remained, not only in the
popular, but in the scientific mind; and it received what appeared to be
a striking confirmation from the researches of Marsigli [113] in 1706.
Pages:
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178