THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



We understand: they are the unoccupied seats 

 of past generations, a kind of pyramid of 

 skulls, and, at the same time the ruin upon which 

 the young life blooms. We bore a deep hole 

 into the mass. It passes through many folded 

 perforated lime arranged in rosettes. Grad- 

 ually these holes are cut across by boring ani- 

 mals, that create here safe asylums for them- 

 selves, worms, sea-urchins, and crabs. The 

 spaces become more and more filled with sand, 

 which the breakers have poured into the holes, 

 or which the worms have brought in in their in- 

 testines and have discharged within. At last 

 the union of the supports becomes invisible, the 

 stone draws together into a kind of natural 

 rock, but it remain lime stone. Various indica- 

 tions show to the eye of the scientists that it is 

 a pyramid of these supports, even though the 

 lowest layers have been gradually crushed into 

 formlessness. 



We speculate how far this cemented life-de- 

 rived structure must go down before it reaches 

 primitive rock, before the frame of life reaches 

 the frame of earth. Our glance follows the 

 colored coral turf upwards as it stretches along 

 the slanting hill side. IVIeanwhile the gentle 

 current of this pleasantly soft wftrm water 

 seizes us and carries us upward. Suddenly the 

 water is white, breakers foam around us, — and 

 in the next moment the animal meadow is gone, 

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