Darwin speaks of the grandeur of the outer shore of these lagoon islands. He says:—“There is a simplicity in the barrier‐like beach, the margin of green bushes and tall cocoa‐nuts, the solid flat of dead coral rock, strewed here and there with great loose fragments, and the line of furious breakers all rounding away towards either hand. The ocean, throwing its waters over the broad reef, appears an invincible, all‐powerful enemy; yet we see it resisted, and even conquered, by means which at first seem most weak and insufficient. It is not that the ocean spares the rock of coral; the great fragments scattered over the reef and heaped on the beach whence the tall cocoa‐nut‐trees spring plainly bespeak the unrelenting power of the waves. Nor are any periods of repose granted; the long swell caused by the gentle but steady action of the trade‐winds, always blowing in one direction over a wide area, causes breakers almost equalling in force those during a gale of wind in the temperate regions, and which never cease to rage. It is impossible to behold these waves without feeling a conviction that an island, though built of the hardest rock—let it be porphyry, granite, or quartz—would ultimately yield and be demolished by such an irresistible power. Yet these low, insignificant coral islets stand, and are victorious; for here another power, as an antagonist, takes part in the contest. The organic forces separate the atoms of carbonate of lime one by one from the foaming breakers, and unite them into a symmetrical structure. Let the hurricane tear up its thousand huge fragments, yet what will that tell against the accumulated labour of myriads of architects at work night and day, month after month? Thus do we see the soft and gelatinous body of a polyp, through the agency of the vital laws, conquering the great mechanical power of the waves of an ocean which neither the art of man nor the inanimate works of nature could successfully resist.” The poet summed the matter rightly when he wrote:— “Millions of millions thus, from age to age, With simplest skill and toil unwearyable, No moment and no movement unimproved, Laid line on line, on terrace terrace spread, To swell the heightening, brightening, gradual mound, By marvellous structure climbing towards the day.... I saw the living pile ascend, The mausoleum of its architects, Still dying upward as their labour closed.... Frail were their frames, ephemeral their lives, Their masonry imperishable. All Life’s needful functions, food, exertion, rest, By nice economy of Providence Were overruled to carry on the process Which out of water brought forth solid rock.”