wind there is brilliant sunshine tempered by occasional terrific
downpours. With a south wind there is a perpetual warm drizzle varied
with heavy showers. With a west wind the weather is apt to be
uncertain, but I was assured that an east wind brought settled, fine
weather. I never recollect an east wind in Bermuda, but my climatic
reminiscences only extend to the winter months.

Bermuda is the most northern coral-atoll existing, and is the only
place where I have actually seen the coral insect at work on the
reefs. He is not an insect at all, but a sort of black slug. These
curious creatures have all an inherited tendency to suicide, for when
the coral-worm gets above the tide-level he dies. Still they work
bravely away, obsessed with the idea of raising their own particular
reef well out of the water at the cost of their own lives. The coral
of a reef is an ugly brown substance which has been inelegantly
compared to a decayed tooth. Not until the coral is pulverised does it
take on its milk-white colour. I am told by learned people that
Bermuda, like most coral islands, is of Aolian formation; that is,
that the powdered coral has been gradually deposited by the winds of
countless centuries until it has risen high out of the water. Farther
south in the tropics, we know what happens. Nature has given the
cocoa-nut the power of preserving its vitality almost indefinitely.
The fallen nuts float on the sea and drift hither and thither. Once
washed up on a beach and dried by the sun, the nut thrusts out little
green suckers from those "eyes" which every one must have noticed on
cocoa-nuts, anchors itself firmly into the soil, and in seven years
will be bearing fruit. The fallen fronds decay and make soil, and so
another island becomes gradually clothed with vegetation. In Bermuda
the cedar replaces the cocoa-nut palm.