74 THE SEA. 



the capstan is manned by six or eight men, while the others guide the helm and trim the 

 sails. Two forces are thus brought to act upon the lines, the horizontal action of the vessel 

 and the vertical action of the capstan. In consequence of the many inequalities of the rockv 

 bottom, the engine advances by jerks, the vessel yielding more or less according to the con- 

 cussion caused by the action of the capstan or sail. The engine seizes upon the rugged rocks 

 at the bottom, and raises them to let them fall again. In this manner the swab, floating 

 about, penetrates beneath the rocks where the coral is found, and is hooked on to it. To fix 

 the lines upon the coral and bring them home is a work of very great labour. The engine 

 long resists the most energetic and repeated efforts of the crew, who, exposed half naked to 

 the burning sun of the Mediterranean, work the capstan to which the cable and engine are 

 attached, while the padrone urges and excites them to increased exertion ; the sailors mean- 

 while trim the sails, and sing with a slow and monotonous tone a song, the words of which 

 improvise in a sort of psalmody the names of the saints most revered among the seafaring 

 Italian population. 



"The lines are finally brought home, tearing or breaking blocks of rock, sometimes 

 of enormous size, which are brought on board. The cross is now placed on the side 

 of the vessel, the lines are arranged on the deck, and the crew occupy themselves in 

 gathering the results of their labour. The coral is gathered together, the branches of 

 the precious alcyonarian are cleansed and divested of the shells and other parasitic 

 products which accompany them; finally, the produce is carried to and sold in the ports 

 of Messina, Naples, Genoa, or Leghorn, where the workers in jewellery purchase them. 

 Behold, fair reader, with what hard labour, fatigue, and peril, the elegant bijouterie with 

 which you are decked is torn from the deepest bed of the ocean." Coral is worth from' 

 as little as two or three shillings a ton to as high as 10 sterling per pound. 



Although the corals of the so-called coral islands are merely good as curiosities, they 

 are very interesting in a scientific and artistic point of view. Darwin* has reasoned 

 very conclusively on the formation of the reefs. He says : " The earlier voyagers 

 fancied that the coral-building animals instinctively built up their great corals to afford 

 themselves protection in the inner parts ; but so far is this from the truth, that those 

 massive kinds to whose growth on the exposed outer shores the very existence of the 

 reef depends cannot live within the lagoon, where other delicately-branching kinds 

 flourish." Moreover, in this view, many species of distinct genera and families are 

 supposed to combine for one end; and of such a combination not a single instance can 

 be found in the whole of Nature. The theory that has been most generally receive! is 

 that atolls are based on submarine craters, but when the form and size of some of them are 

 considered this idea loses its plausible character. Thus, the Suadiva atoll is forty-four 

 geographical miles in diameter in one line by thirty-four in another ; Rimsky is fifty-four 

 by twenty miles across ; Bow atoll is thirty miles long, and, on an average, six miles broad. 

 This theory, moreover, is totally inapplicable to the Northern Maldivian atolls in the Indian 

 Ocean, one of which is eighty-eight miles in length, and between ten and twenty in breadth. ' 



The various theories which had been propounded as to the existence of the coral 



* In " The Origin of Species." 



