CHAPTER IV 



GARDEN OF CORAL 



Brammo Bay has its garden of coral — a border of pretty, 

 quaint and varied growth springing up along the verge of 

 deep water. It is not as it used to be — no less lovely 

 than a flower-garden of the land. Terrestrial storms 

 work as much if not greater havoc in the shallow places of 

 the sea as on the land. Pearl-shell divers assert that 

 ordinary " rough weather " is imperceptible at a depth of 

 two fathoms ; while ten fathoms are generally accepted as 

 the extreme limit of wave action, however violent the 

 surface commotion. Yet in the shallow sea, within the 

 Barrier Reef in times of storm and stress, not only are 

 groves of marine plants torn and wrenched up, but huge 

 lumps of coral rock arc shattered or thrown bodily out of 

 place and piled up on " uproarious beaches." 



A storm in March, 1903, which did scarcely any 

 damage to vegetation ashore, destroyed most of the 

 fantastic forms which made the coral garden enchanting. 

 In its commotion, too, the sea lost its purity. The sedi- 

 ment and ooze of decades were churned up, and, as the 

 agitation ceased, were precipitated — a brown furry, slimy 

 mud, all over the garden — smothering the industrious 

 polyps to whom all its prettiness was due. Order is being 

 restored, fresh and vigorous shoots sprouting up from the 

 fulvid basis ; but it may be many years before the damage 

 is wholly repaired and the original beauty of the garden 

 restored, for the " growth " of coral — the skeletons of the 

 polyps — is methodical and very slow. We speak of coral 

 as if it were a plant, yet the reproduction is by means of 

 eggs, and the polyp is as much an animal as a horse or an 



elephant. 



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