RECORDS LEFT BY THE SEA 



as on the shelving shores of islands. The coral polyp is 

 a jelly-like creature, but it has a hard chalky skeleton 

 inside its transparent body. It is a great colonist, with 

 no liking for a solitary life, but with, on the contrary, 

 a great fancy for its neighbours ; in fact, the polyps grow 

 and thrive in clumps, and the clumps unite to form com- 

 munities, and the communities increase to colonies and 

 nations, till they unite to form what is called a reef. The 

 coral polyps are rather exigent in the choice of their resi- 

 dential neighbourhoods. They cannot live at a greater 

 depth than fifteen or twenty fathoms, and in defiance of 

 the inclinations which rule human beings, they have the 

 strongest distaste for sun and air ; in fact, they die when 

 exposed to it. 



Now when the polyp dies its skeleton remains behind 

 it, and millions upon millions of these coral skele- 

 tons make a layer of coral. These layers of coral 

 gradually lift the generations of polyps upwards to 

 the surface of the water. But as we have seen, the 

 living polyps die when they get so far, and con- 

 sequently the reef then spreads outwards. On the 

 outer edges of the reef the coral polyps flourish in 

 the most vigorous way. There they are as completely 

 provided for as in a County Council Utopia. The 

 breakers bring them the food on which they live ; the 

 water and the climate suit them exactly. The only blot 

 on their lives are the occasional storms which break off 

 fragments of the coral foundation on which they live. 

 But even this, while it is disastrous to the individual 

 polyp, is for the good of the community, because these 



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