T H E S T R A I T OF S U N D A . . 165
The whole groupe of the Thousand Islands, and indeed the
greater part of all those whose surfaces are flat in the neighbourhood
of the equator, owe their origin to the labours of
that order of marine worms which Linnaeus has arranged
under the name of Zoophyta. These little animals, in a most
surprizing manner, construct their calcareous habitations under
an infinite variety of forms, yet with that order and
regularity, each after its own manner, which, to the minute
inquirer, is so discernible in every part of the creation. But
although the eye may be convinced of the fact, it is difficult
for the human iriind to conceive the possibility of insects so
small being endued with the power, much less of being furnished
in their ownvbodies with the materials, of constructing
the immense fabrics which, in almost every part of the
Eastern and Pacific oceans lying between the tropics, are met
with in the shape of detached rocks, or reefs of great extent
just even with the surface, or islands already clothed with
plants, whose bases are fixed at the bottom of the sea
several hundred feet in depth, where light and heat, so
very essential to animal life, if not excluded, are sparingly
received and feebly felt. Thousands of such rocks and reefs
and islands are known to exist in the Eastern ocean, within,
and even beyond, the limits of the tropics. The eastern
coast- of New Holland is almost wholly girt with reefs and
islands of coral rock, rising perpendicularly from the bottom
of the abyss. Captain Kent of the Buffalo, speaking of a
coral reef of many miles in extent, on the south-west coast
of New Caledonia, observes that “ it is level with the water's
“ edge, and, towards the sea, as steep to as the wall of a
“ house; that he sounded frequently within twice the ship’s