APPENDIX.
Containing a detailed description of the reefs and islands in Plate III.


INDEX.



THE STRUCTURE AND DISTRIBUTION OF CORAL REEFS.


CRITICAL INTRODUCTION.

A scientific discovery is the outcome of an interesting process of
evolution in the mind of its author. When we are able to detect the germs
of thought in which such a discovery has originated, and to trace the
successive stages of the reasoning by which the crude idea has developed
into an epoch-making book, we have the materials for reconstructing an
important chapter of scientific history. Such a contribution to the story
of the "making of science" may be furnished in respect to Darwin's famous
theory of coral-reefs, and the clearly reasoned treatise in which it was
first fully set forth.

The subject of corals and coral-reefs is one concerning which much popular
misconception has always prevailed. The misleading comparison of coral-rock
with the combs of bees and the nests of wasps is perhaps responsible
for much of this misunderstanding; one writer has indeed described a
coral-reef as being "built by fishes by means of their teeth." Scarcely
less misleading, however, are the references we so frequently meet with,