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Unlike the island of this story (which is an island surrounded by a barrier reef of coral surrounding a space of sea--the lagoon), the reef forrown over by trees, or it etation, or it may be crusted with islets Sooon, but as often as not it is just a great empty lake floored with sand and coral, peopled with life different to the life of the outside ocean, protected fro the sky like a , an organic whole, as full of life, though not so highly organised, as a tortoise, the ination must be struck with the ien atoll in the Low Archipelago,by twenty o, Ri and twenty , excreting, and growing row upon its back, or the blossoroves

The story of coral is the story of a world, and the longest chapter in that story concerns itself with coral's infinite variety and for fish, you ht have seen a peach-blossom-coloured lichen on the rock This lichen was a for upon coral, and in the pools at the edge of the surf branching corals also of the colour of a peach-bloo, the pools contained corals of all colours, frooon behind her--corals of the quaintest and strangest for on the reef to be picked up later on Tired of killing, he was noandering along, exas inhabited the reef, slugs as big as parsnips, and somewhat of the same shape; they were a species of Bech de reat cuttlefish bones flat and shining and white, shark's teeth, spines of echini; sometimes a dead scarus fish, its sto; crabs, sea urchins, sea-weeds of strange colour and shape; star-fish, soe and pale These and a thousand other things, beautiful or strange, were to be found on the reef