"Coral is formed by an animal belonging to the kingdom of Radiates, sub-kingdom Polypes. The soft body of the animal is attached to a support, the mouth opening upwards in a row of tentacles. The coral is secreted in the body of the polyp out of the carbonate of lime in the sea. Thus the coral animalcule rears its polypidom or rocky structure in warm latitudes, and constructs reefs or barriers round islands. It is limited in rage of depth from 25 to 30 fathoms. Chemically considered, coral is carbonate of like; physiologically, it is the skeleton of an animal; geographically, it is characteristic of warm latitudes, especially of the Pacific Ocean." This description is correct, and even fairly complete, if you know enough of the subject to understand it. But tell me, does it lead you to love my piece of coral? Have you any picture in your mind of the coral animal, its home, or its manner of working?
But now, instead of trying to master this dry, hard passage, take Mr. Huxley's penny lecture on 'Coral and Coral Reefs,' and with the piece of coral in your hand try really to learn its history. You will then be able to picture to yourself the coral animal as a kind of sea-anemone, something like those which you have often seen, like red, blue, or green flowers, putting out feelers in sea-water on our coasts, and drawing in the tiny sea-animals to digest them in that bag of fluid which serves the sea-anemone as a stomach. You will learn how this curious jelly animal can split itself in two, and so form two polyps, or send a bud out of its side and so grow up into a kind of "tree or bush of polyps," or how it can hatch little eggs inside it and throw out young ones from its mouth, provided with little hairs, by means of which they swim to new resting-places. You will learn the difference between the animal which builds up the red coral as its skeleton, and the group of animals which build up the white; and you will look with new interest on our piece of white coral, as you read that each of those little sups on its stem with delicate divisions like the spokes of a wheel has been the home of a separate polyp, and that from the sea-water each little jelly animal has drunk in carbonate of lime as you drink in sugar dissolved in water, and then has used it grain by grain to build that delicate cup and add to the coral tree.
We cannot stop to examine all about coral now, we are only learning how to learn, but surely our specimen is already beginning to grow interesting; and when you have followed it out into the great Pacific Ocean, where the wild waves dash restlessly against the coral trees, and have seen these tiny drops of jelly conquering the sea and building huge walls of stone against the rough breakers, you will hardly rest till you know all their history. Look at that curious circular island in the picture, covered with palm trees; it has a large smooth lake in the middle, and the bottom of this lake is covered with blue, red, and green jelly animals, spreading out their feelers in the water and looking like beautiful flowers, and all round the outside of the island similar animals are to be seen washed by the sea waves. Such islands as this have been build entirely by the coral animals, and the history of the way in which the reefs have sunk gradually down, as the tiny creatures added to them inch by inch, is as fascinating as the story of the building of any fairy palace in the days of old. Read all this, and then if you have no coral of your own to examine, go to the British Museum and see the beautiful specimens in the glass cases there, and think that they have been built up under the rolling surf by the tiny jelly animals; and then coral will become a real living thing to you, and you will love the thoughts it awakens.
But people often ask, what is the use of learning all this? If you do not feel by this time how delightful it is to fill your mind with beautiful pictures of nature, perhaps it would be useless to say more. But in this age of ours, when restlessness and love of excitement pervade so many lives, is it nothing to be taken out of ourselves and made to look at the wonders of nature going on around us? Do you never feel tired and "out of sorts," and want to creep away from your companions, because they are merry and you are not? Then is the time to read about the starts, and how quietly they keep their course from age to age; or to visit some little flower, and ask what story it has to tell; or to watch the clouds, and try to imagine how the winds drive them across the sky. No person is so independent as he who can find interest in a bare rock, a drop of water, the foam of the sea, the spider on the wall, the flower underfoot or the starts overhead. And these interests are open to everyone who enters the fairy-land of science.
Moreover, we learn from this study to see that there is a law and purpose in everything in the Universe, and it makes us patient when we recognize the quiet noiseless working of nature all around us. Study light, and learn how all colour, beauty, and life depend on the sun's rays; note the winds and currents of the air, regular even in their apparent irregularity, as they carry heat and moisture all over the world. Watch the water flowing in deep quiet streams, or forming the vast ocean; and then reflect that every drop is guided by invisible forces working according to fixed laws. See plants springing up under the sunlight, learn the secrets of plant life, and how their scents and colours attract the insects. Read how insects cannot live without plants, nor plants without the flitting butterfly or the busy bee. Realize that all this is worked by fixed laws, and that out of it (even if sometimes in suffering and pain) springs the wonderful universe around us. And then say, can you fear for your own little life, even though it may have its troubles? Can you help feeling a part of this guided and governed nature? or doubt that the power which fixed the laws of the stars and of the tiniest drop of water - that made the plant draw power from the sun, the tine coral animal its food from the dashing waves; that adapted the flower to the insect and the insect to the flower - is also moulding your life as part of the great machinery of the universe, so that you have only to work, and to wait, and to love?
We are all groping dimly for the Unseen Power, but no one who loves nature and studies it can ever feel alone or unloved in the world. Facts, as mere facts, are dry and barren, but nature is full of life and love, and her calm unswerving rule is tending to some great though hidden purpose. You may call this Unseen Power what you will - may lean on it in loving, trusting faith, or bend in reverent and silent awe; but even the little child who lives with nature and gazes on her with open eye, must rise in some sense or other through nature to nature's God.
Week 3
Lecture II Sunbeams and How They Work
Who does not love the sunbeams, and feel brighter and merrier as he watches them playing on the wall, sparkling like diamonds on the ripples of the sea, or making bows of coloured light on the waterfall? Is not the sunbeam so dear to us that it has become a household word for all that is merry and gay? and when we want to describe the dearest, busiest little sprite amongst us, who wakes a smile on all faces wherever she goes, do we not call her the "sunbeam of the house"?
And yet how little even the wisest among us know about the nature and work of these bright messengers of the sun as they dart across space!