Coral and Coral Reefs | Page 6

into definite shapes is very considerable indeed.
Now I think I have said sufficient--as much as I can without taking you into technical details, of the general nature of these creatures which form coral. The animals which form coral are scattered over the seas of all countries in the world. The red coral is comparatively limited, but the polypes which form the white coral are widely scattered. There are some of them which remain single, or which give rise to only small accumulations; and the skeletons of these, as they die, accumulate upon the bottom of the sea, but they do not come to much; they are washed about and do not adhere together, but become mixed up with the mud of the sea. But there are certain parts of the world in which the coral polypes which live and grow are of a kind which remain, adhere together, and form great masses. They differ from the ordinary polypes just in the same way as those plants which form a peat-bog or meadow-turf differ from ordinary plants. They have a habit of growing together in masses in the same place; they are what we call "gregarious" things; and the consequence of this is, that as they die and leave their skeletons, those skeletons form a considerable solid aggregation at the bottom of the sea, and other polypes perch upon them, and begin building upon them, and so by degrees a great mass is formed. And just as we know there are some ancient cities in which you have a British city, and over that the foundations of a Roman city; and over that a Saxon city, and over that again a modern city, so in these localities of which I am speaking, you have the accumulations of the foundations of the houses, if I may use the term, of nation after nation of these coral polypes; and these accumulations may cover a very considerable space, and may rise in the course of time from the bottom to the surface of the sea.
Mariners have a name which they apply to all sorts of obstacles consisting of hard and rocky matter which comes in their way in the course of their navigation; they call such obstacles "reefs," and they have long been in the habit of calling the particular kind of reef, which is formed by the accumulation of the skeletons of dead corals, by the name of "coral reefs," therefore, those parts of the world in which these accumulations occur have been termed by them "coral reef areas," or regions in which coral reefs are found. There is a very notable example of a simple coral reef about the island of Mauritius, which I dare say you all know, lies in the middle of the Indian Ocean. It is a very considerable and beautiful island, and is surrounded on all sides by a mass of coral, which has been formed in the way I have described; so that if you could get upon the top of one of the peaks of the island, and look down upon the Indian Ocean, you would see that the beach round the Island was continued outward by a kind of shallow terrace, which is covered by the sea, and where the sea is quite shallow; and at a distance varying from three-quarters of a mile to a mile and a half from the proper beach, you would see a line of foam or surf which looks most beautiful in contrast with the bright green water in the inside, and the deep blue of the sea beyond. That line of surf indicates the point at which the waters of the ocean are breaking upon the coral reef which surrounds the island. You see it sweep round the island upon all sides, except where a river may chance to come down, and that always makes a gap in the shore.
There are two or three points which I wish to bring clearly before your notice about such a reef as this. In the first place, you perceive it forms a kind of fringe round the island, and is therefore called a "fringing reef." In the next place, if you go out in a boat, and take soundings at the edge of the reef, you find that the depth of the water is not more than from 20 to 25 fathoms--that is about 120 to 150 feet. Outside that point you come to the natural sea bottom; but all inside that depth is coral, built up from the bottom by the accumulation of the skeletons of innumerable generations of coral polypes. So that you see the coral forms a very considerable rampart round the island. What the exact circumference may be I do not remember, but it cannot be less