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Updated: June 5, 2025
In one of the Maldiva atolls, a reef, which within a very few years existed as an islet bearing cocoa-nut trees, was found by Lieutenant Prentice "ENTIRELY COVERED WITH LIVE CORAL AND MADREPORE." The natives believe that the islet was washed away by a change in the currents, but if, instead of this, it had quietly subsided, surely every part of the island which offered a solid foundation, would in a like manner have become coated with living coral.
The flat ground for miles inland is composed of nothing but madrepore, and is covered with semi-fossilised sea-shells, which have probably not been inhabited for thousands of years. We walked over this for three miles before reaching the first spurs of the mountains, and it is impossible to conceive a more barren or arid spot.
After passing within sight of several islands surrounded by reefs of madrepore, upon which the crews wished to land, a permission which Quiros with great prudence always refused, after having been separated from one of the ships of the squadron, which could not or would not follow, the flotilla arrived at the Ladrone soon to be called the Marianne Islands.
As I searched in vain in the hollows on the reef and in the lagoon, for a living specimen of this Madrepore, I conclude that it is confined to a zone outside, and beneath the surface, where it must be very abundant.
In the lagoons, also, he frequently met with clusters of Madrepore, with their extremities standing from one inch to a foot above the surface of the water. Now, these appearances are exactly what I should have expected, without any subsequent elevation having taken place; and I think Mr.
Going as straight as we could, we were not very long before, from a bit of a hill, we could see the blue waters of the ocean spreading far and wide, and soon after we made out the great rollers falling over upon the sands, which spread right and left, of a dazzling whiteness, being composed entirely of powdered-up coral and madrepore.
"Suakim is built of madrepore," he replied to the above question; "very curious. Houses and mosques all of the same materials as these reefs we are now coming to." "Madrepore why, that is a sort of coral isn't it?" "Yes, it is coral." "That's queer though. My shirt-studs are made of coral; fancy a town built of shirt-studs!"
They are Tubulipora patina and Tubulipora hispida; and stay break off that tiny rough red wart, and look at its cells also under the magnifier: it is Cellepora pumicosa; and now, with the Madrepore, you hold in your hand the principal, at least the commonest, British types of those famed coral insects, which in the tropics are the architects of continents, and the conquerors of the ocean surge.
"The rate of growth of the common branching madrepore is not over one and a half inches a year. As the branches are open, this would not be equivalent to more than half an inch in height of solid coral for the whole surface covered by the madrepore; and, as they are also porous, to not over three-eighths of an inch of solid limestone.
The other pearls, black and white alike, ranked as marvelous gems; but this crown-jewel of the Great Pearl Star eclipsed anything the Master for all his wide travel and experience of life ever had seen. By way of strange contrast in values the pearls were separated from each other by worthless, little, smooth lumps of madrepore, or unfossilized coral.
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