116 TOWN GEOLOGY. [v. 



be a mere low reef, which you do not see till you are 

 close upon it ; on which nothing rises above the water, 

 but here and there a knot of cocoa-nut palms or a 

 block of stone, or a few bushes, swarming with innu- 

 merable sea-fowl and their eggs ? Let it be which 

 you will: both are strange enough; both beautiful; 

 both will tell us a story. 



The ship will have to lie- to, and anchor if she can; 

 it may be a mile, it may be only a few yards, from the 

 land. For between it and the land will be a line of 

 breakers, raging in before the warm trade-wind. And 

 this, you will be told, marks the edge of the coral reef. 



You will have to go ashore in a boat, over a sea 

 which looks unfathomable, and which may be a mile or 

 more in depth, and search for an opening in the reef, 

 through which the boat can pass without being knocked 

 to pieces. 



You find one : and in a moment, what a change ! The 

 deep has suddenly become shallow; the blue white, from 

 the gleam of the white coral at the bottom. But the 

 coral is not all white, only indeed a little of it ; for as 

 you look down through the clear water, you find that 

 the coral is starred with innumerable live flowers, blue, 

 crimson, grey, every conceivable hue ; and that these 

 are the coral polypes, each with its ring of arms thrust 

 out of its cell, who are building up their common 

 habitations of lime. If you want to understand, by a 

 rough but correct description, what a coral polype is : 

 all who have been to the sea-side know, or at least 

 have heard of, sea-anemones. Now coral polypes are 

 sea-anemones, which make each a shell of lime, growing 

 with its growth. As for their shapes, the variety of 

 them, the beauty of them, no tongue can describe 



