510 THE CHEMISTRY OF CREATION. 



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 polype, 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 can long resist." 



On the east coast of New Holland a reef has 

 been described as being one thousand miles 

 long, and in one portion is unbroken for a 

 distance of between three and four hundred 

 miles ! Mr. Lyell states that some groups of 

 coral islands in the Pacific Ocean are from 

 eleven to twelve thousand miles in length by 

 three or four hundred in breadth. Coral islands 

 also exist in vast numbers in the Indian Ocean, 

 Thus, only in the instances in question it is 

 evident that the labours of these minute me- 

 chanics the coral animals have added no 

 insignificant mass of solid material to the great 

 earth itself. Yet the ingredients of sea- water, 

 from whence every particle was procured, exists 

 in extremely small proportions. In order to 

 add one pound of carbonate of lime to these 

 structures, a quantity of sea-water, not less than 



