Such is the original type of a young world which in due time will be inhabited. The cocoa-palm will have its insects; the birds will pause on its boughs; men will gather its fruit. Wrecked ships and floating timbers, propelled by the sea, will bring there after awhile tenants of every kind. Some of these islands, when extended, enlarged, and solidified, measure not less than twenty-five miles in circumference. Many are larger still; fertile, inhabited, and populous, like the Maldives. The ambition of their architects might rest contented, you would think, with these vast creations. But to insure their fixity, they have increased their extent. The buttresses by which they strengthen their work at the bottom of the sea being prolonged and elevated, expand into banks, which link the isles to each other over an immense area. Along the line of burning life, in the tropic zone, these indefatigable builders have daringly intersected the sea and worked athwart its currents, and already are arresting the courses of our navigators. New Caledonia is now surrounded by a reef of 145 leagues in length. The chain of the Maldive Islands measures 480 English miles. To the east of New Holland stretches a bank of polypes over 360 leagues, 127 of these without interruption. Finally, in the Pacific Ocean the mass known as the Dangerous Archipelago is about 400 leagues in length by 150 in breadth. If they continue after this fashion, incessantly connecting their various piles of submarine masonry, they will perhaps realize the prophecy of Kirby, who discerned in the coral isles and reefs the possibility of a new world--a brilliant and fertile world; and in the course of centuries may accomplish the formation of a causeway, an immense bridge, connecting Asia with America. [Illustration] [Illustration: IV.--LOVE AND DEATH.] [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. LOVE AND DEATH. Above the infinite elementary life,--that quasi-vegetable life in which generation is but, as it were, a-budding,--begins the distinct, individual, and complete organism whose strongly centralized electric network of nerves is able to sympathize directly with the rapid energy of its acts and resolutions. However humble the insect may seem in appearance, it is from the first independent of the immovable, expectant existence of all the inferior races. It is born entirely free from that communistic fatalism which merges the being of each in the life of all. It exists independently; it moves, goes, comes, advances or returns, changes its determination or its direction at pleasure, or in obedience to its wants, appetites, and caprices. It suffices for itself; it foresees, provides, defends, and boldly confronts the most unexpected chances. In this, then, do we not discern, as it were, a first glimpse of personality?