ere ploughing. He would
not believe you--he would hardly believe me--if we told him that this
stone had been once a swarm of living things, of exquisite shapes and
glorious colours. And yet he can plough and sow, and reap and mow, and
fell and strip, and hedge and ditch, and give his neighbours sound
advice, and take the measure of a man's worth from ten minutes' talk, and
say his prayers, and keep his temper, and pay his debts,--which last
three things are more than a good many folks can do who fancy themselves
a whole world wiser than John in the smock-frock.

Oh, but I want to hear about the exquisite shapes and glorious colours.

Of course you do, little man. A few fine epithets take your fancy far
more than a little common sense and common humility; but in that you are
no worse than some of your elders. So now for the exquisite shapes and
glorious colours. I have never seen them; though I trust to see them ere
I die. So what they are like I can only tell from what I have learnt
from Mr. Darwin, and Mr. Wallace, and Mr. Jukes, and Mr. Gosse, and last,
but not least, from one whose soul was as beautiful as his face, Lucas
Barrett,--too soon lost to science,--who was drowned in exploring such a
coral-reef as this stone was once.

Then there are such things alive now?

Yes, and no. The descendants of most of them live on, altered by time,
which alters all things; and from the beauty of the children we can guess
at the beauty of their ancestors; just as from the coral-reefs which
exist now we can guess how the coral-reefs of old were made. And that
this stone was once part of a coral-reef the corals in it prove at first
sight.

And what is a coral-reef like?

You have seen the room in the British Museum full of corals, madrepores,
brain-stones, corallines, and sea-ferns?

Oh yes.

Then fancy all those alive. Not as they are now, white stone: but
covered in jelly; and out of every pore a little polype, like a flower,
peeping out. Fancy them of every gaudy colour you choose. No bed of
flowers, they say, can be more brilliant than the corals, as you look
down on them through the clear sea. Fancy, again, growing among them and
crawling over them, strange sea-anemones, shells, star-fish, sea-slugs,
and sea-cucumbers with feathery gills, crabs, and shrimps, and hundreds
of other animals, all as strange in shape, and as brilliant in colour.
You may let your fancy run wild. Nothing so odd, nothing so gay,