98 



FUNAFUTI 



thus obtaining specimens of the material of which it is 

 composed, down to a depth considerably greater than 

 that at which corals are supposed to build. How would 

 this illustrate the question ? Allow me to employ a 

 homely illustration : buyers of cheese are not, I presume, 

 naturally more suspicious than other persons engaged in 

 trade, but they are unwilling to trust too much to mere 

 outward appearance ; they are not inclined to adopt the 

 argument which commended itself to Chamisso in a 

 parallel case, that because there is good cheese on the 



DARWIN 



MURRAY 



FIG. 25. 



surface it must be good cheese all through : consequently, 

 by means of a boring instrument, called a scoop, they 

 make a hole through the cheese and bring out a core or 

 cylindrical rod, in which the several strata of the material, 

 if there be more than one, are displayed in their true 

 thickness and natural position. The atoll is our cheese, 

 which we propose to sample with a complicated kind of 

 scoop called a diamond drill. This should provide us 

 with a core in which the various layers of the coral reef 

 should be faithfully represented. Should Darwin's theory 

 prove correct, the core will contain the remains of reef- 



