460 KEELING ISLAND. [cHar. Xx. 
and even conquered, by means which at first seem most weak and 
inefficient. It is not that the ocean spares the rock of coral ; 
the great fragments scattered over the reef, and heaped on the 
beach, whence the tall cocoa-nut springs, plainly bespeak the 
unrelenting power of the waves. Nor are any periods of repose 
granted. The long swell caused by the gentle but steady action 
of the trade-wind, always blowing in one direction over a wide 
area, causes breakers; almost equalling in force those during a 
gale of wind in the temperate regions, and which never cease to 
rage. It is impossible 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, insig- 
nificant 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 struc- 
ture. 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 gelatinous body of a polypus, through the 
agency of the vital laws, conquering the great mechanical power 
of the waves of an ocean which neither the art of man nor the 
inanimate works of nature could successfully resist. 
We did not return on board till late in the evening, for we 
staid a long time in the lagoon,-examining the fields of coral and 
the gigazitic shells of the chama, into which, if a man were to put 
his hand, he would not, as long as the animal lived, be able to 
withdraw it. Near the head of the lagoon, I was much surprised 
to find a wide area, considerably more than a mile square, covered 
witha forest of delicately branching corals, which, though stand- 
ing upright, were all dead and rotten. At first I was quite at a 
loss to understand the cause; afterwards it occurred to me that 
it was owing to the following rather curious combination of cir- 
cumstances. It should, however, first be stated, that corals are 
not able to survive even a short exposure in the air to the sun’s 
rays, so that their upward limit of growth is determined by that 
of lowest water at spring tides. It appears, from some old charts, 
that the long island to windward was formerly separated by wide 
