106 THE WORLD OF THE SEA. 
owe their existence to the water, and they perish in the air and sun. 
Hence the reason that coral found above the surface is always 
dead. The waves as they dash against these rocky islands detach 
pieces of the coral, and reduce the fragments by their wearing 
action to dust. Thus a beach is formed, covered with rounded 
blocks and strewed with sand. Upon this shingle the sea casts 
the remains of fish, mollusks, and marine vegetables, where they 
decompose, mingling with the madrepore debris, and soon there 
springs up a terrestrial vegetation. Thus is it that the Creator 
ordains that islands should be born in the ocean’s bosom, and 
lands rise up out of the waste of waters. 
The structure, when at the level of the sea, is soon tenanted by 
animal and vegetable life. The waters leave seeds carried from 
other lands, which soon spring up, and the island is clothed 
with verdure. The trunks of trees borne by the currents from 
neighbouring islands are cast upon the beach. Worms, insects, 
and shells, which are in these trunks, are thus transported to the 
new-born island, and constitute its earliest population. Turtles 
swim to it; birds, attracted by the vegetation, fly hither and build 
their nests in safety; people from the surrounding islands, driven 
by stress of weather or allured by the beauty of the situation or 
by the abundance of its fruits, raise here their huts and establish 
their tribes. Thus the industry of man completes what the 
industry of the polypes began. 
These smallest and feeblest animalcules possess in their natural 
state a charm and beauty of which their empty polypidoms cannot 
afford even a remote idea, however elegant they may be and how- 
ever carefully preserved or scientifically classed. 
