It is not that the ocean
spares the rock of coral; the great fragments scattered over the
reef, and heaped on the beach, whence the tall cocoa-nut springs,
plainly bespeak the unrelenting power of the waves. Nor are any
periods of repose granted. The long swell caused by the gentle but
steady action of the trade-wind, always blowing in one direction
over a wide area, causes breakers, almost equalling in force those
during a gale of wind in the temperate regions, and which never
cease to rage. It is impossible to behold these waves without
feeling a conviction that an island, though built of the hardest
rock, let it be porphyry, granite, or quartz, would ultimately
yield and be demolished by such an irresistible power. Yet these
low, insignificant coral-islets stand and are victorious: for here
another power, as an antagonist, takes part in the contest. The
organic forces separate the atoms of carbonate of lime, one by one,
from the foaming breakers, and unite them into a symmetrical
structure. Let the hurricane tear up its thousand huge fragments;
yet what will that tell against the accumulated labour of myriads
of architects at work night and day, month after month? Thus do we
see the soft and gelatinous body of a polypus, through the agency
of the vital laws, conquering the great mechanical power of the
waves of an ocean which neither the art of man nor the inanimate
works of nature could successfully resist.
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