The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 56, June, 1862

What is now the rate of growth of these Coral Reefs? We cannot, perhaps, estimate it with absolute accuracy, since they are now so nearly completed; but Coral growth is constantly springing up wherever it can find a foothold, and it is not difficult to ascertain approximately the rate of growth of the different kinds. Even this, however, would give us far too high a standard; for the rise of the Coral Reef is not in proportion to the height of the living Corals, but to their solid parts which never decompose. Add to this that there are many brittle delicate kinds that have a considerable height when alive, but contribute to the increase of the Reef only so much additional thickness as they would have when broken and crushed down upon its surface. A forest in its decay does not add to the soil of the earth a thickness corresponding to the height of its trees, but only such a thin layer as would be left by the decomposition of its whole vegetation. In the Coral Reef, also, we must allow not only for the deduction of the soft parts, but also for the comminution of all these brittle branches, which would be broken and crushed by the action of the storms and tides, and add, therefore, but little to the Reef in proportion to their size when alive.

The foundations of Fort Jefferson, which is built entirely of Coral rock, were laid on the Tortugas Islands in the year 1846. A very intelligent head-work man watched the growth of certain Corals that established themselves on these foundations, and recorded their rate of increase. He has shown me the rocks on which Corals had been growing for some dozen years, during which they had increased at the rate of about half an inch in ten years. I have collected facts from a variety of sources and localities that confirm this testimony. A brick placed under water in the year 1850 by Captain Woodbury of Tortugas, with the view of determining the rate of growth of Corals, when taken up in 1858 had a crust of Maeandrina upon it a little more than half an inch in thickness. Mr. Allen also sent me from Key West a number of fragments of Maeandrina from the breakwater at Fort Taylor; they had been growing from twelve to fifteen years, and have an average thickness of about an inch. The specimens vary in this respect,—some of them being a little more than an inch in thickness, others not more than half an inch. Fragments of Oculina gathered at the same place and of the same age are from one to three inches in length; but these belong to the lighter, more branching kinds of Corals, which, as we have seen, cannot, from their brittle character, be supposed to add their whole height to the solid mass of the Coral wall. Millepore gives a similar result.

Estimating the growth of the Coral Reef according to these and other data of the same character, it should be about half a foot in a century; and a careful comparison which I have made of the condition of the Reef as recorded in an English survey made about a century ago with its present state would justify this conclusion. But allowing a wide margin for inaccuracy of observation or for any circumstances that might accelerate the growth, and leaving out of consideration the decay of the soft parts and the comminution of the brittle ones, which would subtract so largely from the actual rate of growth, let us double this estimate and call the average increase a foot for every century. In so doing, we are no doubt greatly overrating the rapidity of the progress, and our calculation of the period that must have elapsed in the formation of the Reef will be far within the truth.

The outer Reef, still incomplete, as I have stated, and therefore of course somewhat lower than the inner one, measures about seventy feet in height. Allowing a foot of growth for every century, not less than seven thousand years must have elapsed since this Reef began to grow. Some miles nearer the main-land are the Keys, or the inner Reef; and though this must have been longer in the process of formation than the outer one, since its growth is completed, and nearly the whole extent of its surface is transformed into islands, with here and there a narrow break separating them, yet, in order to keep fully within the evidence of the facts, I will allow only seven thousand years for the formation of this Reef also, making fourteen thousand for the two.

This brings us to the shore-bluffs, consisting simply of another Reef exactly like those already described, except that the lapse of time has united it to the main-land by the complete filling up and consolidation of the channel which once divided it from the extremity of the peninsula, as a channel now separates the Keys from the shore-bluffs, and the outer Reef, again, from the Keys. These three concentric Reefs, then, the outer Reef, the Keys, and the shore-bluffs, if we measure the growth of the two latter on the same low estimate by which I have calculated the rate of progress of the former, cannot have reached their present condition in less than twenty thousand years. Their growth must have been successive, since, as we have seen, all Corals need the fresh action of the open sea upon them, and if either of the outer Reefs had begun to grow before the completion of the inner one, it would have effectually checked the growth of the latter. The absence of an incipient Reef outside of the outer Reef shows these conclusions to be well founded. The islands capping these three do not exceed in height the level to which the fragments accumulated upon their summits may have been thrown by the heaviest storms. The highest hills of this part of Florida are not over ten or twelve feet above the level of the sea, and yet the luxuriant vegetation with which they are covered gives them an imposing appearance.

But this is not the end of the story. Travelling inland from the shore-bluffs, we cross a low, flat expanse of land, the Indian hunting-ground, which brings us to a row of elevations called the Hummocks. This hunting-ground, or Everglade as it is also called, is an old channel, changed first to mud-flats and then to dry land by the same kind of accumulation that is filling up the present channels, and the row of hummocks is but an old Coral Reef with the Keys or islands of past days upon its summit. Seven such Reefs and channels of former times have already been traced between the shore-bluffs and Lake Okee-cho-bee, adding some fifty thousand years to our previous estimate. Indeed, upon the lowest calculation, based upon the facts thus far ascertained as to their growth, we cannot suppose that less than seventy thousand years have elapsed since the Coral Reefs already known to exist in Florida began to grow. When we remember that this is but a small portion of the peninsula, and that, though we have not yet any accurate information as to the nature of its interior, yet the facts already ascertained in the northern part of this State, formed like its Southern extremity of Coral growth, justify the inference that the whole peninsula is formed of successive concentric Reefs, we must believe that hundreds of thousands of years have elapsed since its formation began. Leaving aside, however, all that part of its history which is not susceptible of positive demonstration in the present state of our knowledge, I will limit my results to the evidence of facts already within our possession; and these give us as the lowest possible estimate a period of seventy thousand years for the formation of that part of the peninsula which extends south of Lake Okee-cho-bee to the present outer Reef.

So much for the duration of the Reefs themselves. What, now, do they tell us of the permanence of the Species by which they were formed? In these seventy thousand years has there been any change in the Corals living in the Gulf of Mexico? I answer, most emphatically, No. Astraeans, Porites, Maeandrinas, and Madrepores were represented by exactly the same Species seventy thousand years ago as they are now. Were we to classify the Florida Corals from the Reefs of the interior, the result would correspond exactly to a classification founded upon the living Corals of the outer Reef to-day. There would be among the Astraeans the different species of Astraea proper, forming the close round heads,—the Mussa, growing in smaller stocks, where the mouths coalesce and run into each other as in the Brain-Corals, but in which the depressions formed by the mouths are deeper,—and the Caryophyllians, in which the single individuals stand out more distinctly from the stock; among Porites, the P. Astroïdes, with pits resembling those of the Astraeans in form, though smaller in size, and growing also in solid heads, though these masses are covered with club-shaped protrusions, instead of presenting a smooth, even surface like the Astraeans,—and the P. Clavaria, in which the stocks are divided in short, stumpy branches, with club-shaped ends, instead of growing in close, compact heads; among the Maeandrinas we should have the round heads we know as Brain-Corals, with their wavy lines over the surface, and the Manacina, differing again from the preceding by certain details of structure; among the Madrepores we should have the Madrepora prolifera, with its small, short branches, broken up by very frequent ramifications, the M. cervicornis, with longer and stouter branches and less frequent ramifications, and the cup-like M. palmata, resembling an open sponge in form. Every Species, in short, that lives upon the present Reef is found in the more ancient ones. They all belong to our own geological period, and we cannot, upon the evidence before us, estimate its duration at less than seventy thousand years, during which time we have no evidence of any change in Species, but on the contrary the strongest proof of the absolute permanence of those Species whose past history we have been able to trace.

Before leaving the subject of the Coral Reefs, I would add a few words on the succession of the different kinds of Polyp Corals on a Reef as compared with their structural rank and also with their succession in time, because we have here another of those correspondences of thought, those intellectual links in Creation, which give such coherence and consistency to the whole, and make it intelligible to man.

The lowest in structure among the Polyps are not Corals, but the single, soft-bodied Actiniae. They have no solid parts, and are independent in their mode of existence, never forming communities, like the higher members of the class. It might at first seem strange that independence, considered a sign of superiority in the higher animals, should here be looked upon as a mark of inferiority. But independence may mean either simple isolation, or independence of action; and the life of a single Polyp is no more independent in the sense of action than that of a community of Polyps. It is simply not connected with or related to the life of any others. The mode of development of these animals tells us something of the relative inferiority and superiority of the single ones and of those that grow in communities. When the little Polyp Coral, the Astraean or Madrepore, for instance, is born from the egg, it is as free as the Actinia, which remains free all its life. It is only at a later period, as its development goes on, that it becomes solidly attached to the ground, and begins its compound life by putting forth new beings like itself as buds from its side. Since we cannot suppose that the normal development of any being can have a retrograde action, we are justified in believing that the loss of freedom is in fact a stage of progress in these lower animals, and their more intimate dependence on each other a sign of maturity.

There are, however, structural features by which the relative superiority of these animals may be determined. In proportion as the number of their parts is limited and permanent, their structure is more complicated; and the indefinite multiplication of identical parts is connected with inferiority of structure. Now in these lowest Polyps, the Actiniae, the tentacles increase with age indefinitely, never ceasing to grow while life lasts, new chambers being constantly added to correspond with them, till it becomes impossible to count their numbers. Next to these come the true Fungidae. They are also single, and though they are stony Corals, they have no share in the formation of Reefs. In these, also, the tentacles multiply throughout life, though they are usually not so numerous as in the Actiniae. But a new feature is added to the complication of their structure, as compared with Actiniae, in the transverse beams which connect their vertical partitions, though they do not stretch across the animal so as to form perfect floors, as in some of the higher Polyps. These transverse beams or floors must not be confounded with the horizontal floors alluded to in a former article as characteristic of the ancient Acalephian Corals, the Rugosa and Tabulata. For in the latter these floors stretch completely across the body, uninterrupted by vertical partitions, which, if they exist at all, pass only from floor to floor, instead of extending unbroken through the whole height of the body, as in all Polyps. Where, on the contrary, transverse floors exist in true Polyps, they never cut the vertical partitions in their length, but simply connect their walls, stretching wholly or partially from wall to wall.

In the Astraeans, the multiplication of tentacles is more definite and limited, rising sometimes to ninety and more, though often limited to forty-eight in number, and the transverse floors between the vertical partitions are more complete than in the Fungidae. The Porites have twelve tentacles only, never more and never less; and in them the whole solid frame presents a complicated system of connected beams. The Madrepores have also twelve tentacles, but they have a more definite character than those of the Porites, on account of their regular alternation in six smaller and six larger ones; in these also the transverse floors are perfect, but exceedingly delicate. Another remarkable feature among the Madrepores consists in the prominence of one of the Polyps on the summit of the branches, showing a kind of subordination of the whole community to these larger individuals, and thus sustaining the view expressed above, that the combination of many individuals into a connected community is among Polyps a character of superiority when contrasted with the isolation of the Actiniae;. In the Sea-Fans, the Halcyonoids, as they are called in our classification, the number of tentacles is always eight, four of which are already present at the time of their birth, arranged in pairs, while the other four are added later. Their tentacles are lobed all around the margin, and are much more complicated in structure than those of the preceding Polyps.

According to the relative complication of their structure, these animals are classified in the following order:—

STRUCTURAL SERIES

Halcyonoids: eight tentacles in pairs, lobed around the margin; always combined in large communities, some of which are free and movable like single animals.

Madrepores: twelve tentacles, alternating in six larger and six smaller ones; frequently a larger top animal standing prominent in the whole community, or on the summit of its branches.

Porites: twelve tentacles, not alternating in size; system of connected beams.

Astraeans: tentacles not definitely limited in number, though usually not exceeding one hundred, and generally much below this number; transverse floors. Maeandrines, generally referred to Astraeans, are higher than the true Astraeans, on account of their compound Polyps.

Fungidae: indefinite multiplication of tentacles; imperfect transverse beams.

Actiniae: indefinite multiplication of tentacles; soft bodies and no transverse beams.

If, now, we compare this structural gradation among Polyps with their geological succession, we shall find that they correspond exactly. The following table gives the geological order in which they have been introduced upon the surface of the earth.

GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION

Present, Halcyonoids.

Pliocene, \

Miocene, } Madrepores.

Eocene, /

Cretaceous, \ Porites

Jurassic, } and

Triassic, } Astraeans.

Permian, /

Carboniferous, \

Devonian, } Fungidae

Silurian, /

With regard to the geological position of the Actiniae we can say nothing, because, if their soft, gelatinous bodies have left any impressions in the rocks, none such have ever been found; but their absence is no proof that they did not exist, since it is exceedingly improbable that animals destitute of any hard parts could be preserved.

The position of the Corals on a Reef accords with these series of structural gradation and geological succession. It is true that we do not find the Actiniae in the Reef any more than in the crust of the earth, for the absence of hard parts in their bodies makes them quite unfit to serve as Reef-Builders. Neither do we find the Fungidae, for they, like all low forms, are single, and not confined to one level, having a wider range in depth and extent than other stony Polyps. But the true Reef-Building Polyps follow each other on the Reef in the same order as prevails in their structural gradation and their geological succession; and whether we classify them according to their position on the Reef, or their introduction upon the earth in the course of time, or their relative rank, the result is the same.

[Illustration: SUCCESSION ON THE REEF.]

It would require an amount of details that would be tedious to many of my readers, were I to add here the evidence to prove that the embryological development of these animals, so far as it is known, and their geographical distribution over the whole surface of our globe, show the same correspondence with the other three series. But this recurrence of the same thought in the history of animals of the same Type, so that, from whatever side we consider them, their creation and existence seem to be guided by one Mind, is so important in the study of Nature, that I shall constantly refer to it in the course of these papers, even though I may sometimes be accused of unnecessary repetition.

What is the significance of these coincidences? They were not sought for by the different investigators, who have worked quite independently, while ascertaining all these facts, without even knowing that there was any relation between the objects of their studies. The succession of fossil Corals has been found in the rocks by the geologist,—the embryologist has followed the changes in the growth of the living Corals,—the zoölogist has traced the geographical distribution and the structural relations of the full-grown animals; but it is only after the results of their separate investigations are collected and compared that the coincidence is perceived, and alt find that they have been working unconsciously to one end. These thoughts in Nature, which we are too prone to call simply facts, when in reality they are the ideal conception antecedent to the very existence of all created beings, are expressed in the objects of our study. It is not the zoölogist who invents the structural relations establishing a gradation between all Polyps,—it is not the geologist who places them in the succession in which he finds them in the rocks,—it is not the embryologist who devises the changes through which the living Polyps pass as he watches their growth; they only read what they see, and when they compare their results they all tell the same story. He who reads most correctly from the original is the best naturalist. What unites all their investigations and makes them perfectly coherent with each other is the coincidence of thought expressed in the facts themselves. In other words, it is the working of the same Intellect through all time, everywhere.

When we observe the practical results of this sequence in the position of Corals on the Reef, we cannot fail to see that it is not a mere accidental difference of structure and relation, but that it bears direct reference to the part these little beings were to play in Creation. It places the solid part of the structure at the base of the Reef,—it fills in the interstices with a lighter growth,—it crowns the summit with the more delicate kinds, that yield to the action of the tides and are easily crushed into the fine sand that forms the soil,—it makes a masonry solid, compact, time-defying, such a masonry as was needed by the great Architect, who meant that these smallest creatures of His hand should help to build His islands and His continents.

THE AUTHOR OF "CHARLES AUCHESTER."

When Mr. Disraeli congratulated himself that in the "Wondrous Tale of Alroy" he had invented a new style, he scarcely deemed that he had but spun the thread which was to vibrate with melody under the hand of another. For in none of his magical sentences is the spell exactly complete, and nowhere do they drop into the memory with that long slow rhythm and sweet delay which mark every distinct utterance of Elizabeth Sheppard. Yet at his torch she lit her fires, over his stories she dreamed, his "Contarini Fleming" she declared to be the touchstone of all romantic truth, and with the great freights of thought argosied along his pages she enriched herself. "Destiny is our will, and our will is our nature," he says. Behold the key-note of those strangely beautiful Romances of Temperament of which for ten years we have been cutting the leaves!

In "Venetia," hint and example were given of working the great ores that lie in the fields about us; and when Elizabeth Sheppard in turn took up the divining-rod, it sought no clods of baser metal, but gold-veined masses of crystal and the clear currents of pure water-streams;—beneath her compelling power, Mendelssohn—Beethoven—Shelley—lived again and forever.

The musician who perhaps inspired a profounder enthusiasm during his lifetime than any other ever did had been missed among men but a few years, when a little book was quietly laid upon his shrine, and he received, as it were, an apotheosis. Half the world broke into acclaim over this outpouring of fervid worship. But it was private acclaim, and not to be found in the newspapers. To those who, like the most of us in America, vainly hunger and thirst after the sweets of sound, the book was an initiation into the very penetralia of music, we mounted and rested in that sphere from the distastes of too practical life, long afterwards we seemed to hear the immortal Song of which it spoke, and our souls were refreshed. There followed this in a year—inscribed to Mrs. Disraeli, as the other had been to that lady's husband—"Counterparts": a novel which, it is not too much to say, it is impossible for human hand to excel;—superior to its predecessor, since that was but a memorial, while this was the elaboration of an Idea. Here the real author ceased awhile. Three succeeding books were but fancies wrought out, grafts, happy thoughts, very possibly enforced work; but there were no more spontaneous affairs of her own individuality, until the one entitled "Almost a Heroine." In this work, which treated of the possible perfection of marriage, the whole womanly nature of the writer asserted itself by virtue of the mere fact of humanity. After this came a number of juvenile stories, some commonplace, others infiltrated with that subtile charm which breathes, with a single exception, through all her larger books like the perfume of an exotic. Thus in the three novels mentioned we have all that can be had of Elizabeth Sheppard herself: in the third, her theory of life; in the second, her aspirations and opinions; in the first, her passion.

The orphaned daughter of an English clergyman, and self-dependent, in 1853 she translated her name into French and published "Charles Auchester,"—a book written at the age of sixteen. That name of hers is not the most attractive in the tongue, but all must love it who love her; for, if any theory of transmission be true, does she not owe something of her own oneness with Nature, of her intimacy with its depths, of her love of fields and flowers and skies, to that ancestry who won the name as, like the princely Hebrew boy, they tended the flocks upon the hills, under sunlight and starlight and ill every wind that blew? Never was there a more characteristic device than this signature of "E. Berger"; and nobody learned anything by it. At first it was presumed that some member of the house of Rothschild had experienced a softening of the brain to the extent implied by such effusion of genuine emotion, and it was rather gladly hailed as evidence of the weakness shared in common with ordinary mortals by that more than imperial family, the uncrowned potentates of the world,—the subject and method of the book being just sufficiently remote from every-day to preserve the unities of the supposition. Gradually this theory was sought to be displaced by one concerning a German baroness acquainted neither with Jews nor with music, humored as it was by that foreign trick in the book, the idioms of another tongue; but the latter theory was too false on its face to be tenable, and then people left off caring about it. It is perhaps an idle infirmity, this request for the personality of authors; yet it is indeed a response to the fact that there never was one who did not prefer to be esteemed for himself rather than for his writing,—and, ascending, may we love the works of God and not the Lord himself? However, none were a whit the wiser for knowing Miss Sheppard's name. It came to be accepted that we were to have the books,—whence was no matter; they were so new, so strange, so puzzling,—the beautiful, the quaint, and the faulty were so interwoven, that nobody cared to separate these elements, to take the trouble to criticize or to thank; and thus, though we all gladly enough received, we kept our miserly voices to ourselves, and she never met with any adequate recognition. After her first book, England quietly ignored her,—they could not afford to be so startled; as Sir Leicester Dedlock said, "It was really—really—"; she did very well for the circulating libraries; and because Mr. Mudie insists on his three volumes or none at all, she was forced to extend her rich webs to thinness. It is this alone that injures "Counterparts" for many;—not that they would not gladly accept the clippings in a little supplementary pamphlet, but dissertations, they say, delay the action. In this case, though, that is not true; for, besides the incompleteness of the book without the objectionable dissertation, (that long conversation between Miss Dudleigh and Sarona,) it answers the purpose of very necessary by-play on the stage during preparation for the last and greatest scene. But had this been a fault, it was not so much hers as the publishers'. Subject to the whims of those in London, and receiving no reply to the communication of her wishes from those in Edinburgh, she must have experienced much injustice at the hands of her booksellers, and her title-pages show them to have been perpetually changed. She herself accepts with delight propositions from another quarter of the globe; the prospect of writing for those across the water was very enticing to her; and in one of her letters she says,—"It is my greatest ambition to publish in America,—to have no more to do personally with English publishers"; and finding it, after serious illness, impossible to fulfil this engagement in season, the anxiety, regret, and subsequent gratitude, which she expressed, evinced that she had been unaccustomed to the courteous consideration then received.