CORAL REEFS, A ND ISLANDS. 259 



possible to behold these waves without feeling a 

 conviction that an island, though built of the hardest 

 rock, let it be porphyry, granite, or quartz, would 

 ultimately yield, and be demolished by such an 

 irresistible power. Yet these low insignificant coral 

 islets stand, and are victorious ; for here another 

 power, as an antagonist, takes part in the contest. 

 The organic forces separate the atoms of carbonate 

 of lime, one by one, from the foaming breakers, and 

 unite them into a symmetrical structure. Let the 

 hurricane tear up its thousand huge fragments, yet 

 what will that tell against the accumulated labour 

 of myriads of architects, at work night and day, 

 month after month ? Thus do we see the soft and gela- 

 tinous body of a polyp, through the agency of the vital 

 laws, conquering the great mechanical power of the 

 waves of the ocean, which neither the art of man nor the 

 inanimate works of nature could successfully resist." 1 

 Allowing a little poetical licence, and remember- 

 ing that the facts were not so well known in Mont- 

 gomery's days as in ours, we might add, in the 

 words of the " Pelican Island " : 



" Nine times the age of man that coral reef 

 Had bleach'd beneath the torrid noon, and borne 

 The thunder of a thousand hurricanes, 

 Raised by the jealous ocean, to repel 

 That strange encroachment on his old domain. 



1 Darwin, "Journal of Researches" (1852), p 459. 

 S 2 



