For between it and
the land will be a line of breakers, raging in before the warm trade-
wind. And this, you will be told, marks the edge of the coral reef.
You will have to go ashore in a boat, over a sea which looks
unfathomable, and which may be a mile or more in depth, and search
for an opening in the reef, through which the boat can pass without
being knocked to pieces.
You find one: and in a moment, what a change! The deep has suddenly
become shallow; the blue white, from the gleam of the white coral at
the bottom. But the coral is not all white, only indeed a little of
it; for as you look down through the clear water, you find that the
coral is starred with innumerable live flowers, blue, crimson, grey,
every conceivable hue; and that these are the coral polypes, each
with its ring of arms thrust out of its cell, who are building up
their common habitations of lime. If you want to understand, by a
rough but correct description, what a coral polype is: all who have
been to the sea-side know, or at least have heard of, sea-anemones.
Now coral polypes are sea-anemones, which make each a shell of lime,
growing with its growth. As for their shapes, the variety of them,
the beauty of them, no tongue can describe them. If you want to see
them, go to the Coral Rooms of the British or Liverpool Museums, and
judge for yourselves.
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