

THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



lime-stone. We bore down eleven hundred feet 

 and are still in this pyramid of coral supports. 

 Then we drop a lead outside to ascertain how 

 high the whole coral island rises out of the ac- 

 tual ocean depths and find it to be six thousand 

 feet. If the coral lime-stone extends to that 

 depth, then the coral animals are not simply is- 

 land, but mountain builders. But how can this 

 be possible when the coral polyp can not live at 

 t^such depths ? The solution begins to dawn upon 

 us. When the corals began to build there was 

 here a real natural cliff reaching to within one 

 hundred and twenty feet of the surface of the 

 water. On this cliff the first generation of corals 

 settled. They deposited upon it their layer of 

 mortar, composed of lime-stone stools, and died ; 

 the next generation located itself upon the de- 

 serted stools and built supports — and so on. So 

 there grew up to the surface a coral crown. 

 Then a giant hand entered into the play. The 

 old earth moved beneath the whole. The earth 

 colossus is never quiet. The hard rock cliff in 

 the throbbing ocean is only an apparent symbol 

 of the fixed contrasted with the wavering. The 

 view we take depends upon our standard of 

 time. Each hour sees a hundred waves rise and 

 fall in the ocean. If we could observe through 

 hundreds of centuries as we do hours, we would 

 see the crust of the earth, the "fixed," in a sim- 

 ilar wave plav. Slowly it rises up before us 

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