AGE OF CORAL REEFS. 199 



them. The succession of fossil Corals has been 

 found in the rocks by the geologist, the embry- 

 ologist has followed the changes in the growth 

 of the living Corals, the zoologist has traced 

 the geographical distribution and the structural 

 relations of the full-grown animals ; but it is 

 only after the results of their separate investi- 

 gations are collected and compared that the 

 coincidence is perceived, and all find that they 

 have been working unconsciously to one end. 

 These thoughts in Nature, which we are too prone 

 to call simply facts, when in reality they are the 

 ideal conception antecedent to the very existence 

 of all created beings, are expressed in the objects 

 of our study. It is not the zoologist who invents 

 the structural relations establishing a gradation 

 between all Polyps, it is not the geologist who 

 places them in tho succession in which he finds 

 them in the rocks, it is not the embryologist 

 who devises the changes through which the living 

 Polyps pass ?s he watches their growth ; these 

 investip;ators only read what they see, and, when 

 they compare their results, it is found that they 

 all tell the same story. He who reads most cor- 

 rectly from the original is the best naturalist. 

 What unites all their investigations, and makes 

 them perfectly coherent with eacli other, is the 

 coincidence of thought expressed in the facts 

 themselves. In other words, it is the working 



