24 
THE LIVING WORLD. 
are constant stimulants to the imagination, and readily suggest the won¬ 
ders of life to those who find it difficult to perceive these in objects to which 
they are more accustomed. Many of these islands, however, are wholly the work 
of the coral insect, which thus offers its life that in the fulness of time it may 
provide a habitation for man. The fact that the coral appears unable to build at a 
greater depth than thirty fath¬ 
oms seems to sustain the belief 
of scientists, who assert that 
the sea is only submerged land, 
and that now in our day this 
process of submerging a con¬ 
tinent is every day going on 
in the Pacific. The infinite 
variety of shape exhibited by 
the coral formations, and the 
pellucid character of the water, 
suggest the most gorgeous and 
varied architecture of the Orient, 
while the myriads of jelly-fish 
and polyps, with their shadings 
of crimson and sapphire and 
yellow, lend the effect of color¬ 
ing compared to which the 
gilded domes and minarets of 
man seem sombre. Or again, 
they suggest the most luxu¬ 
riant and gorgeous submarine 
garden, whose flowers are the 
colored inhabitants of the sea, 
and whose serpentine paths are 
marked by the most beautiful 
shells. After vegetation has 
sprung from the seeds, brought 
thither by fish and bird and 
breeze, many an island looks 
at a distance as if it were 
merely a garland intended to 
add to the glories of Neptune, 
or to be worn by some gigantic 
mermaid. It has been sug¬ 
gested by some one with a keen 
instinct for turning every de- 
different forms of corae- velopmeiit to the service of man, 
that we shall yet see the day 
when we will cultivate the coral insect and make it expend its efforts in building 
sea-walls for our harbors. If it be remembered that man’s “ greatest achievements 
have been but the precipitation of his dreams,” we shall feel less inclined to scoff 
at a suggestion no more preposterous than the building of the Pacific Railroad, 
or the spanning of the Mississippi by the great Saint Louis Bridge. It is not 
