A Gem from the Sea

Coral has been used for personal ornamentation, and as an article of commerce, from the earliest period recorded in writing. Popular to-day, as it has almost always been—especially in the form of polished fragments, pierced and strung like beads, and less extensively in beads, spherical or oval—the most desired, high grade of light rose-pink coral is becoming scarce, and those who gather it from the ocean's floor are anxiously seeking new sources of supply. At the present time coral is increasing in favour and the demand for it is steadily growing.

Coral—like the sea gem, the pearl,—is essentially carbonate of lime. Its structure is erected by a family of zoophytes, gelatinous marine animals (not insects as is too often written) called polyps. The coral is secreted by a peculiar layer of the skin; it is the calcareous skeleton of the lowly organised animal, and gradually develops like the bones of vertebrates, and is not built up as bees build a honeycomb as is popularly believed. The pits or depressions on a branch of coral represent the places where the coral colonists once grew. Coral is a common submarine feature in low latitudes all around the globe, but the gem or precious coral, Corallium rubrum, formerly called Corallium nobile, comes almost exclusively from the Mediterranean Sea off the African, Corsican, and Sicilian coasts. A wild-rose pink is the particular shade most highly favoured. The Corallium rubrum, the only species utilised and valued to any extent for jewelry, belongs to the family Gorgonidae of the group Alcyonaria.

The skeleton of a colony of Corallium rubrum is found to be cemented firmly by a disc-shaped foot to any dense natural or foreign object on the sea bottom, as a stone, cannon-ball, bottle, or, as is recorded in one case of fact, a human skull. The branches seldom exceed a foot in length and an inch in diameter. A curious characteristic of coral is, that it grows always perpendicular, or approximately, at a right angle to the surface to which it is attached—downward, if its foothold is on the under face of a rock.

The colonies are usually from sixty to one hundred feet beneath the sea's surface.

Some expert authorities have fathered the assertion that about thirty years is required for coral stock to develop into full size; yet the Sicilian coral bank is divided into ten sections, one of which is finished every year, and at the end of the decade the first bank yields full-sized stock.

Pietro Moncadi of Palermo, said to be the largest dealer in Italian coral, during a recent visit to New York, reported that the demand for high grade red coral leads the supply. Many beds off the Italian coasts are exhausted and there is much prospecting off Malta, Malabar, and East African coasts, at great expense and, so far, with very small reward. Signor Moncadi made the statement that the United States buys the finest red coral, and the producers who possess the highest grade have to seek no other market.