Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/183

 the polypes will some day form a communication between them. Then the new island will (later on) become united to neighbouring islands, and a fifth continent will extend from New Zealand and New Caledonia to the Marquesas.

When I suggested this to Captain Nemo, he coldly replied:

“It is not new continents that are required, but new inhabitants of the old ones.”

The chances of navigation had conducted the Nautilus towards the island of Clermont-Tonnerre, one of the most curious of the group which was discovered in 1822 by Captain Bell of the Minerva. I was thus able to study the system by which islands are formed in this ocean by madrepores.

The madrepores, which must not be confounded with the coral, have a tissue enclosed in a calcareous crust, and the modifications of the structure have enabled Mr. Milne-Edwards, my illustrious master, to class them in five sections. The tiny animalcules which secrete this polypary live in thousands of millions at the bottom of the little cells. These are the calcareous depôts which become rocks, reefs, islets, islands. Here they form a ring, enclosing a lagoon or interior lake, in which an opening permits communication with the sea. There they construct reefy barriers like those which exist on the coasts of New Caledonia and the various islands of Pomotou. In other places, like Reunion and Maurice, they build fringed reefs, high upright walls, alongside which the sea is extremely deep.

At a few cables’ lengths from the shore of the island of Clermont-Tonnerre I inspected the work done by M 2