282 TOILERS IN THE SEA. 



seaward, by building ever fresh foundations on its 

 own fragments, when broken and submerged, or that 

 the vigorous growth of the reefs, to windward, was 

 due to the more abundant supply of food, brought to 

 the reef-building animals from that direction, by 

 oceanic currents, so did it never occur to him that it 

 might melt away to the rear, like salt or sugar, as the 

 vital energy of the coral animals failed, in the shel- 

 tered and comparatively stagnant water. It was that 

 vital energy alone, which not only built up the living 

 tubes and cells, but which filled them with living 

 organic matter, capable of resisting the chemical 

 affinities of the inorganic world. But when that 

 energy became feeble, and when at last it ceased, the 

 once powerful structure descended again to that 

 lower level of the inorganic, and subject to all its 

 laws. Then, what the ocean could not do, by the 

 violence of its waves, it was all-potent to do by the 

 corroding and dissolving power of its calmer lagoons. 

 Ever eating, corroding, and dissolving, the back 

 waters of the original fringing reef the mere pools 

 and channels left by the outrageous sea, as it dashed 

 upon the shore were ceaselessly at work, aided by 

 the high temperature of exposure to blazing suns, 

 and by the gases evolved from decaying organisms. 

 Thus the enlarging area of these pools and channels 

 spread out into wide lagoons, and into still wider 

 protected seas. They needed no theory of subsidence 



