Precious Coral

Abstract

WHILST preparing a set of lectures on Corals, lately delivered at the Royal Institution, I made some nquiries as to the present state of the fisheries of precious coral from Messrs. Greek and Co., coral merchants, of Rathbone Place, who also have an establishment at Naples. They exhibited a very fine series of examples of raw and worked coral at one of my lectures, and also sent me the following short notes on the Italian and Sicilian coral fisheries, partly taken from an Italian newspaper, nit which contain some facts which may be interesting o the readers of NATURE. I was shown a large number of the Sciacca specimens, all attached to groups of bivalve hells or pieces of dead coral. The blackened coral is described by Lacaze Duthiers in his famous monograph as “corail noirci dans la vase.” It is very possible that he blackening substance is binoxide of manganese, since dredged, in deep water during the Challenger Expedition, large quantities of a dead coral skeleton, apparently allied to Corallium, which was blackened by that substance. It is in the hope of eliciting some definite information from the readers of NATURE concerning the so-called Japanese Corallium that I send the present notes. At a late meeting of the Zoologicai Society, Mr. G. O. Ridley, of the British Museum, read a paper on the Cora1iidæ, and reviewed the species known, and exhibited specimens of the form said to come from Japan. I obtained specimens of this corallium from Mr. Cutter, the London dealer, from whom I first learned that a precious corai was called Japanese. He told me that he had seen a large quanLity in the market in London, but that it would not fetch any price, whereas Messrs. Greck state that Japanese corai sold for an extremely high price in ltaly. Messrs. Phillips, of Cockspur Street, who also exhibited a fine series of specimens of precious corai at one of my lectures, showed amongst them a carved jewel cut out of Japanese coral, which is remarkable as being of mixed colour, marbled white and red, and also, as they informed me, for its far greater hardness than ordinary precious coral.