These
rocks, which are strong enough to resist the force of the waves, rise out
of the sea naked and bare, but are soon covered with green, and become the
resting-place of the sea-birds, until at last they are like that lovely
island, fringed with tall cocoa-palms, which we saw in the picture. If it
were not for the myriads of tiny jelly-fishes, who work on and on, each
forming its own little bones from the lime it gets from the sea-water,
dying, and leaving its skeleton behind for others to build upon, there
would be none of these beautiful green isles of the sea of which sailors
love to tell us.
We were speaking of contrasts some time ago; now for a contrast. Beside the
coral, with its lovely branching sprays, we will put a piece of coal. You
think the coal very black and ugly, not fit to be put alongside the white
coral; but let me tell you that there is that in the coal which was once
far more beautiful than the coral--which is only a bare skeleton after
all--could ever be; for, though coal and coral are alike dead now, both
were once full of life.
But the coal, which is certainly more useful than beautiful at present, has
had a wonderful past. Besides the fossil-animals which are dug out of the
earth's crust, there are also fossil-trees and ferns, and it is of them
that coal, which seems only like a black stone, is made. I have read that
in a part of England where there are now great coal mines, for a long time
no one knew the worth of coal except some old women, who said they could
make their fires burn beautifully by putting those black bits of stone upon
them.
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