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Beneath the waves there are madrepores, in infinity of number, silently but ceaselessly pursuing their labours; and with time, that fundamental element in nature's workings, who shall tell whether these may not gradually build up island after island, which shall unite and form another continent?
At the foot of the Castillo de in Punta, near the Havannah, on shelves of cavernous rocks,* covered with verdant sea-weeds and living polypi, we find enormous masses of madrepores and other lithophyte corals set in the texture of those shelves. Is the change of colour produced by the waters owing to the manganese which we recognize by some dendrites?
The madrepores will not build their subaqueous coral walls where rivers run into the ocean; hence the open spaces here and there happily left, that form deep transverse channels admitting the largest ships. No longer suffering from thirst, its kindred appetite now returned with undivided agony, and the next thought was for something to eat.
My fever was high, and when at last I went to sleep, I had a queer dream about madrepores and medusae, and I wrote it down as well as I could, and called it 'Algae Adventures, in a Voyage Round the World. Edna, I have stolen something from you, and as you will be sure to find it out when you read my little story, where there is a long, hard word missing in the MS., I will tell you about it now.
They are mostly inhabitants of the water; all are destitute of joints, nerves, lungs, and proper blood-vessels; but they all possess an irritable system, in obedience to which they expand or contract at will. Among the Anthozoa are the Anemones; among the Polyzoa, are the Madrepores, or Coral-Builders, and many others. Many are microscopic, and belong to the class of animalcules called Infusoria.
Further in the offing, for a space of 1,300 miles along the coast, from the Abrolhos Islands to Maranham, the bottom in many places is composed of "tuf blanc, mele ou forme de madrepores broyes." Where the waves act with unequal force on the two sides of an atoll, the islets appear to be first formed, and are generally of greater continuity on the more exposed shore.
The whole plain of the Murrumbidgee has been, at not a very distant date, beneath the ocean; as the Madrepores, and other fossils in the limestone cliffs of the river testify. Earthquakes have been felt in South Australia since its settlement. A very intelligent gentleman there told me that he had noted eleven since his arrival; quite perceptible enough to leave no doubt as to their character.
"En s'éloignant de la chaîne, on voit les couches calcaires s'aplanir assez rapidement, prendre une position horizontale, et devenir abondantes en toute forte de coquillages, de madrépores, et d'autres dépouilles marines. How valuable for science to have naturalists who can distinguish properly what they see, and describe intelligibly that which they distinguish.
Mysterious destiny! yet not so mysterious as that of the free medusoid young of every polype and coral, which ends as a rooted tree of horn or stone, and seems to the eye of sensuous fancy to have literally degenerated into a vegetable. Of them you must read for yourself in Mr. Gosse's book; in the meanwhile he shall tell you something of the beautiful Madrepores themselves.
I hastened to the aperture, and under the crustations of coral, covered with fungi, syphonules, alcyons, madrepores, through myriads of charming fish girelles, glyphisidri, pompherides, diacopes, and holocentres I recognised certain debris that the drags had not been able to tear up iron stirrups, anchors, cannons, bullets, capstan fittings, the stem of a ship, all objects clearly proving the wreck of some vessel, and now carpeted with living flowers.
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