362 AUSTRALIA : 



phenomena of physical geography, few in truth are more 

 extraordinary than those great coral formations, which, under 

 different shapes and designations, meet the navigator in his 

 passage through the tropical seas ; rarely passing far beyond 

 these limits of latitude, but, within the wide belt of ocean 

 thus included, rising up from unknown depths in stranger 

 forms than imagination could devise, and alike perplexing to 

 the naturalist from their multitudinous occurrence in some 

 tracts of sea, and their absence in others. Here we find the 

 circular lagoon islets (or atolls, as they are now termed, 

 by adoption of a native word), circles of coral rock, often 

 barely emerging from the wilderness of waters around ; yet 

 resisting the heaviest storms, and sheltering small central 

 lakes, the placid surface of whose blue water strangely con- 

 trasts with the tumult of waves without. Elsewhere, as in 

 various parts of the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans, we 

 see these coral islands occurring in closer groups, with innu- 

 merable channels between ; covering often a wide area of sea, 

 and so numerous as almost to defy all reckoning and survey. 

 England, which plants its flag on every various surface of 

 the earth, possesses in the Bermudas one of these coral 

 clusters, further remarkable as the most distant point from 

 the Equator at which coral rocks are known to occur. Else- 

 where again, we find these extraordinary creations of the 

 deep forming barrier reefs to islands or portions of continent ; 

 encircling some, bordering or fringing others, through lines 

 of enormous extent. In certain places, as between the 

 north-eastern coast of Australia and New Caledonia, they are 

 so largely developed in the form of detached reefs as to have 

 obtained from Flinders the name of the Coral Sea. 



To almost all our readers it must be known that these vast 

 works are due to the labours of certain species of Zoophytes > 

 ranking among the most minute and slightly organised forms 

 of animal life, yet having a common instinct of existence 



