PART II 



THE CORALS AND THE CORAL 

 PROBLEM 



CHAPTER VII 



THE EARLY STAGES OF THE LIFE-HISTORY 

 OF THE CORALS 



The myriad coral colonies that grow in sucli luxuriance in 

 the warm, clear waters of Cocos-Keeling are of course the 

 most important of all the forms of life found in the atoll, 

 for of coral the whole place is formed, and no particle of the 

 dry land is made of anything save the bleached fragments 

 of dead colonies. Every island is made of boulders of coral 

 and coral sand ; every rock is coral living or dead ; and 

 every portion of the barrier reef is composed of the remains 

 of colonies torn from their beds below the sea. There are no 

 stones in coral islands save those brought by man, or carried 

 floating on the roots of trees, and the most commonplace 

 of stones have been regarded as being of enormous value 

 in some coral islands, when chance has cast them on the 

 beaches. 



Every square inch of land in the atoll is coral, and coral 

 in its living splendour clothes the seaward sides of the islands, 

 and carpets the lagoon, wherever the conditions for its life are 

 favourable. 



Besides being of paramount importance, the coral beds are 

 objects of very great beauty ; but I think that the pictures 

 that have been painted of the splendour of living coral are 

 often over-coloured. The corals of the Cocos-Keeling atoll 



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