Now the work began in earnest. The polyp began to eat, to eat as greedily as a boy who has had not a bit for a whole day. It took in chalk and phosphorus from the sea food that came its way, yet it seemed never to get enough, and all the while the little feelers kept reaching out for more food and pouring it into the open mouth. As it ate, the chalk it took in piled around the little rim, which I told you was the beginning of the house, and although the polyp wanted much to hold some of that nice chalk food in its mouth long enough to get the full taste, it could not. The white substance went right down and piled up on the rim; so it is no wonder that the little creature was always hungry.
Well, it ate and it ate. The rim kept growing and growing, as of course it must with so much chalk piling up on it, and as the house grew higher and higher the polyp kept moving to the top. The part below was hard and white like stone, and still the polyp kept eating, eating, and building, building.
For a long time it kept on, until finally it died. Then one day another drop of living jelly floated that way, and finding the chalk house of the other polyp, stopped there and began building on top of it. The waves rolled on. The sun shone, and all the while the house went steadily higher. Other polyps too came and began building beside and above it, and as they died they left their hard, white homes behind them as the first polyp had done. Others and still others came, until, as many, many years passed, the chalk houses reached the top of the water and men called them an island.
The waves rolled by. Seaweed drifted that way and lodged itself on the chalk reefs. It decayed and turned to soil. Sometimes the water and sometimes the wind brought bits of plant and seed from some other older islands, until at last there were flowers and trees and birds singing in the branches.
Now the ships of the world sail by, going toward China or Australia or to the American shores far, far away, and sometimes they stop at the little island, and sometimes those on board rest there among the palms and think it so delightful a land that they wish they never had to go away, but might stay there always and always. Yet but for a wee, curious sea creature that island would not be, for it had its beginning in a tiny animal, more like a drop of jelly than anything else, that floated one day between Samoa and the Australian mainland, and made its house upon a bit of submerged rock.
Sources of Material for Science Stories
Beard, James Carter: Humor in Animals.
Bergen, Fanny Dickerson: Plant Work.
Burroughs, John: Squirrels and Other Fur-bearers.