104 CORAL FORMATIONS. 
at the coral plantation should be taken by the reader, before proceed- 
ing with the explanations which follow. 
Coral plantation and coral field, are more appropriate appellations 
than coral garden, and convey a juster impression of the surface of a 
growing reef. Like a spot of wild land, covered in some parts with 
varied shrubbery, in other parts bearing only occasional tufts of vege- 
tation over barren plains of sand, here a clump of saplings, and there 
a carpet of variously coloured flowers—such is the coral plantation. 
Numerous kinds of zoophytes grow scattered over the surface, like 
the vegetation of the land: there are large areas that bear nothing, 
and others that are thickly overgrown. ‘There is no green sward to 
the landscape, and here the comparison fails. Sand and fragments 
fill up the bare intervals between the flowering tufts: or where the 
zoophytes are crowded, there-are deep holes among the stony stems 
and folia, that seem as if formed among the aggregated roots of the 
living corals. , 
These observations will prepare the mind for some disappointment 
in a first view of coral reefs. Nature does not make green-houses ; 
but distributes widely her beauties, and leaves it for man to gather 
into gardens the choicer varieties. Yet there are scenes in the coral 
landscape, which justify the brightest colourings of the poet: where 
coral shrubbery and living flowers are mingled in profusion; where 
Astrea domes seem like the gemmed temples of the coral world, and 
Madrepore vases, the decorations of the groves; and as the forests 
and flowers of land have their birds and butterflies, so 
“ Life in rare and beautiful forms 
Is sporting amid those bowers of stone.” 
These fields of growing coral spread over submarine lands, such 
as the shores of islands and continents, where the depth is not greater 
than their habits require, just as vegetation extends itself through 
regions that are congenial. The germ or ovule, which, when first 
produced, swims free, finds afterward a point of rock, or dead coral, 
to plant itself upon, and thence springs the tree, or some other form 
of coral growth. 
The analogy to vegetation does not stop here. It is well known 
that the debris of the forest, decaying leaves and stems, and animal 
remains, add to the soil; and that accumulations of this kind are 
ceaselessly in progress: that by this means, in the luxuriant swamp, 
deep beds of peaty earth are formed. So it is in the coral mead. 
