There is considerable beauty in a small coral reef, when seen from a ship's mast-head, at a short distance, in clear weather. A small island with a white sand-beach and a tuft of trees, is surrounded by a symmetrically oval space of shallow water, of a bright grass-green colour, enclosed by a ring of glittering surf as white as snow; immediately outside of which is the rich dark blue of deep water. All the sea is perfectly clear from any mixture of sand or mud. It is this perfect clearness of the water which renders navigation among coral reefs at all practicable; as a shoal with even five fathoms water on it, can be discerned at a mile distance from a ship's mast-head, in consequence of its greenish hue contrasting with the blue of deep water. In seven fathoms water, the bottom can still be discerned on looking over the side of a boat, especially if it have patches of light-coloured sand; but in ten fathoms the depth of colour can scarcely be distinguished from the dark azure of the unfathomable ocean. This bed of reefs stretches along the coast of Australia, and across Torres Strait, nearly to the coast of New Guinea, a distance of one thousand miles!
One of the charms of Natural History is, that it gives a perpetual interest to Nature,—that things, to the common eye of no attraction, have the power of giving singular gratification; and that, in fact, the intelligent naturalist is indulged with a sense of beauty, and an accession of knowledge in almost every production of nature. We cannot avoid quoting the example in the writer's own words. The subject was a block of coral, accidentally brought up by a fish-hook from the bottom of one of the anchorages. Nothing could have been less promising, and any one but a naturalist would have pronounced it to be nothing but a piece of rock, and have flung it into the sea again. But what a source of interest does it become in the hands of the man of science.
"It was a mere worn dead fragment, but its surface was covered with brown, crimson, and yellow Nulliporæ, many small Actinæ, and soft branching Corallines, Flustra, and Eschara, and delicate Reteporæ, looking like beautiful lace-work carved in ivory. There were several small sponges and Alcyonia, seaweeds of two or three species, two species of Comatula, and one of Aphiura, of the most vivid colours and markings, and many small, flat, round corals, something like Nummulites in external appearance.
"On breaking into the block, boring shells of several species pierced it in all directions, many still containing their inhabitants; while two or three
Nereis lay twisted in and out among its hollows and recesses, in which, likewise, were three small species of crabs."
If it should be supposed that the receptacle or nidus of all those curious and varied things was a huge mass of rock, we are informed that,—
"The block was not above a foot in diameter, and was a perfect museum in itself, while its outside glared with colour, from the many brightly and variously coloured animals and plants. It was by no means a solitary instance; every block which could be procured from the bottom, in from ten to twenty fathoms, was like it."
The reflection on this exuberance of nature is striking and true.—"What an inconceivable amount of animal life must be here scattered over the bottom of the sea! to say nothing of that moving through its waters; and this through spaces of hundreds of miles: every corner and crevice, every point occupied by living beings, which, as they become more minute, increase in tenfold abundance."
And let it be remembered, too, that those creatures have not merely life, but enjoyment; that they are not created for any conceivable use of man, but for purposes and pleasures exclusively suited to their own state of existence; that they exist in millions of millions, and that the smallest living thing among those millions, not merely exceeds in its formation, its capacities, and its senses, all that the powers of man can imitate, but actually offers problems of science, in its simple organisation, which have baffled the subtlest human sagacity since the creation, and will probably baffle it while man treads the globe.
In the navigation along the coast, the officers had frequent meetings with the natives, who seemed to have known but little of the English settlements, for their conduct was exactly that of the savage. They evidently looked with as much surprise on the ships, the boats, and the men, as the inhabitants of Polynesia looked upon the first navigators to their shores. They were all astonishment, much craft, and a little hostility on safe occasions.