The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs

Abstract

THE rising generation of naturalists and geologists has not had, and most probably will never have, such feelings of intellectual pleasure as fell to the lot of the first readers of Charles Darwin's book on Coral Reefs, which was offered to science more than thirty years since. The recent researches into the nature of the deposits of the deep sea, and the discoveries of the bathy-metrical zones of water of very different temperatures, are certainly full of vast interest, and will afford the data for the development of many a theory; but the clear exposition of facts, and the bold theory which characterised the book on Coral Reefs, came unexpectedly and with overpowering force of conviction. The natural history of a zoophyte was brought into connection with the grandest phenomena of the globe—with the progressive subsidence of more or less submerged mountains, and with the distribution of volcanic foci. The forces of the organic and inorganic kingdoms were shown to unite in the production of those circular growths of coral which appeared to rise from profound oceanic depths; and it was made evident that the existence and persistent growth of fragile Porites and Madreporæ were dependent upon movements of the crust of the globe, the result of forces acting almost from the beginning—upon movements so vast, equable and slow, that over thousands of square miles the coral grew upwards, whilst the supporting rock, its base, and the mother crust subsided in a wonderful unison. The pristine condition of the globe was in fact brought in relation with the formation of those beautiful islands, the theme of romance and poesy, the delight of the missionary, the dread of the navigator, and which should be, according to Dana, the luxurious home of enervated and used-up investigators.

The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs.

By Charles Darwin, &c. Second edition, revised. 1874; pp. 268. (Smith, Elder, and Co.)