29S Hicks on the (Reef='BitUde7's. 
tury." It is true that all the parties concerned, professors 
Huxley and Judd on the one hand, and the noble duke on the 
other, are highly esteemed on this side of the water, but whether 
peer or commoner shall prove to be wholly right, or both con- 
siderably in the wrong, is not a vital matter to us. In respect 
to the duke's charge that scientific men are given to idolatry, 
and guilt}- of suppressing truths which might topple their 
Dagon (or Darwin) to the earth, we see too many examples of 
the fierce zeal of young naturalists to win their spurs by knock- 
ing old ones on the head, to give that charge much credence. 
But as to the example bi-ought forward by the duke to en- 
force his "Great Lesson" — the true theory of coral formations — 
we do take a deep interest in that. We want to know how 
coral reefs and islands ai'e actually formed, no matter who may 
suffer or gain in reputation, by the establishment of the truth. 
Holding this judicially impartial attitude we shall be better 
qualified fo discriminate and to reach a just conclusion than those 
who have permitted their emotions to mingle with and obscure 
their perceptions and judgments. 
In the bald statement of the two theories, as above, there is 
truly little or nothing to discriminate. But each theory is really 
a great complex of facts and interpretations in which there is 
much to discriminate. Especially in the application of the 
theories to the facts is the great complexity of the problem, and 
the need of careful distinctions apparent. The radical fault of 
theorists is too freqviently seen to be wholesale generalization — 
"brilliant" generalization, perhaps, at least in the eyes of their 
admirers, but none the less wholesale and untrustworthy. The 
assumption that all coral formations are subject to the same law, 
that there must be a theory of coral reefs and islands, is an error 
of this kind. It is quite conceivable that one law of growth 
may determine the form of some reefs, and a different law may 
apply to others; in other words there may be two or more true 
theories of coral formation, instead of one. 
Why should coral reefs require any special explanation? 
Are they not simply examples of ordinary organic sediments, 
such as have been forming all through geological history? 
Take any one of the old limestones and inquire how it was 
made. Was it not by the accumulation u\)on some sea-bottom 
