XIII. On the organic tissues in the bony structure of the corallidæ

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Abstract
The polyps of the numerous species of the Corallidæ have been known and described many years, but I am not aware that their connection with each other has been traced through the solid masses of their calcareous skeletons, or that the nature and structure of the animal tissues of these parts have, to the present period, been figured or described by any author. Ellis, in his History of Corallines, published in the year 1755, has described the mode he adopted in the examination of the calcareous axes of some of the subjects of his observations, and has mentioned in several places in his work, that he had subjected them to the action of vinegar, but he does not in any instance minutely describe the results obtained by this application, nor does he describe any organic tissues or results, further than that he thus obtained the animal substance of the skeleton, freed from the calcareous matter previously combined with it. That so accurate, acute and industrious an observer, should not have seen and described more of the minute organic tissues which are now with our improved means readily to be distinguished in the tribe of animals that formed the objects of his investigations, is only to be accounted for by the want of instruments competent to observe tissues of such extreme delicacy

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