uring which the Pacific Ocean, the
general state of the climate, and the sea, and the temperature has been
substantially what it is now; and yet that state of things which now
obtains in the Pacific Ocean is the yesterday of the history of the life
of the globe. Those pyramids of coral rock are built upon a foundation
which is itself formed by the deposits which the geologist has to deal
with. If we go back in time and search through the series of the rocks,
we find at every age of the world's history which has yet been examined,
accumulations of limestone, many of which have certainly been built
up in just the same way as those coral reefs which are now forming the
bottom of the Pacific Ocean. And even if we turn to the oldest periods
of geologic history, although the nature of the materials is changed,
although we cannot apply to them the same reasonings that we can to the
existing corals, yet still there are vast masses of limestone formed of
nothing else than the accumulations of the skeletons of similar animals,
and testifying that even in those remote periods of the world's history,
as now, the order of things implies that the earth had already endured
for a period of which our ordinary standards of chronology give us not
the slightest conception. In other words, the history of these coral
reefs, traced out honestly and carefully, and with the same sort of
reasoning that you would use in the ordinary affairs of life, testifies,
like every fact that I know of, to the prodigious antiquity of the earth
since it existed in a condition in the main similar to that in which it
now is.

[Footnote 1: A Lecture delivered in Manchester, November 4th, 1970.]

End of Project Gutenberg's Coral and Coral Reefs, by Thomas H. Huxley

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CORAL AND CORAL REEFS ***

***** This file should be named 2937.txt or 2937.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/3/2937/

Produced by Amy E. Zelmer

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
co