In the chapter on climatal changes further attention will be given to the action of ocean currents from the point of view of their influence on the heat and moisture of different parts of the world. We now have to consider the last important influence of ocean currents--that which they directly exercise on the development of organic life. The most striking effect of this nature which the sea streams bring about is caused by the ceaseless transportation to which they subject the eggs and seeds of animals and plants, as well as the bodies of the mature form which are moved about by the flowing waters. But for the existence of these north and south flowing currents, due to the presence of the continental barriers, the living tenants of the seas would be borne along around the earth, always in the same latitude, and therefore exposed to the same conditions of temperature. In this state of affairs the influences which now make for change in organic species would be far less than they are. Journeying in the great whirlpools which the continental barriers make out of the westward setting tropical currents, these organic species are ever being exposed to alterations in their temperature conditions which we know to be favourable to the creation of those variations on which the advance of organic life so intimately depends. Thus the ocean currents not only help to vary the earth by producing changes in the climate of both sea and land, breaking up the uniformity which would otherwise characterize regions at the same distance from the equator, but they induce, by the consequences of the migrations which they enforce, changes in the organic tenants of the sea. Another immediate effect of ocean streams arises where their currents of warm water come against shores or shallows of the sea. At these points, if the water have a tropical temperature, we invariably find a vast and rapid development of marine animals and plants, of which the coral-making polyps are the most important. In such positions the growth of forms which secrete solid skeletons is so rapid that great walls of their remains accumulate next the shore, the mass being built outwardly by successive growths until the realm of the land may be extended for scores of miles into the deep. In other cases vast mounds of this organic _debris_ may be accumulated in mid ocean until its surface is interspersed with myriads of islands, all of which mark the work due to the combined action of currents and the marine life which they nourish. Probably more than four fifths of all the islands in the tropical belt are due in this way to the life-sustaining action of the currents which the trade winds create.