actual food consists of the micro-organisms in the slush and on the
superficies of the unassimilatable solids.

When submitted to the sun on the dry beach death is speedy, and
decomposition in the case of some species complete to obliteration in a
few hours. An apparently solid body, weighty in comparison with its size
and apparently of such nature that rapid desiccation would convert it
into a tough, leathery substance, it melts at the sight of the sun,
leaving as a relic of existence its last meal--a handful of grit-covered
with a transparent film of varnish, which the first wavelet of the
flowing tide dissolves. Yet on the reef in a pool such an individual
endures complacently water heated to a temperature of 108 . Though
feeble and of such readily dissolvable texture, beche-de-mer may be
regarded as among the mightiest agents in the conversion of the waste of
the coral reef into mud--the sort of mud of which some of the toughest of
rocks are compounded. Graded by this and that species, the debris is
reduced to fine particles, which upon sedimentation help to raise the
level of the reef and thus prepare foundations for dry land.

For richness of colour and diversity of design some of the lovely corals
and sponges, which seem to counterfeit the inventions and contrivances of
man, and the algae, and those anomalous "growths" which fixedly adhere
to the under surface of stones and blocks of coral debris, are not to be
surpassed. These dull stones, partly buried in sand, reveal in blotches,
daubs, and smears the crude extravagances of a painter's palette. Can it
be that such brilliant colours and tints, so profuse and delicate, are
necessary features of animals of such crude organisms that they appear to
be merely disembodied splashes and driblets from the brush of the Great
Artist? Look at this fantastic patchwork, brightening the obscurity of
an upturned stone with glowing orange. In perfectly regular minute dots a