The Organic Forces
Separate The Atoms Of Carbonate Of Lime, One By One, From
The Foaming Breakers, And Unite Them Into A Symmetrical
Structure.
Let the hurricane tear up its thousand huge
fragments; yet what will that tell against the accumulated
labour of myriads of architects at work night and day, month
after month?
Thus do we see the soft and gelatinous body of a
polypus, through the agency of the vital laws, conquering
the great mechanical power of the waves of an ocean which
neither the art of man nor the inanimate works of nature
could successfully resist.
We did not return on board till late in the evening, for we
stayed a long time in the lagoon, examining the fields of
coral and the gigantic shells of the chama, into which, if a
man were to put his hand, he would not, as long as the animal
lived, be able to withdraw it. Near the head of the
lagoon I was much surprised to find a wide area, considerably
more than a mile square, covered with a forest of delicately
branching corals, which, though standing upright,
were all dead and rotten. At first I was quite at a loss to
understand the cause afterwards it occurred to me that it
was owing to the following rather curious combination of
circumstances. It should, however, first be stated, that corals
are not able to survive even a short exposure in the air to
the sun's rays, so that their upward limit of growth is
determined by that of lowest water at spring tides.
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