nt, then said in a surprised voice:

"Why, yes. Bermuda is an isolated point, isn't it? I hadn't thought of
that before. Nearly all islands are in chains, but this little bit of a
place is set off all by itself. I wonder why that is?"

"Bermuda is the top of a submarine mountain," was the reply, "perhaps
part of the lost Atlantis--who knows? This stupendous peak rises almost
fifteen thousand feet sheer from the ocean bed and its rugged top
forms the basis of the islands. Think what a magnificent sight it would
be if we could see its whole height rising from the darkness of the
ocean deep."

[Illustration: THE _EARLY BIRD_ PASSING THE BERMUDA AQUARIUM, AGAR'S
ISLAND.

_Photograph by C. R-W._]

"But I thought Bermuda was a coral island!"

"The coral polyp has got to grow on something, hasn't it?" the scientist
reminded him. "Don't forget that the little creatures can't live in deep
water. And, you see, Bermuda has gradually been sinking, the coral
builders keeping pace with the subsidence, so that although the island
is only two miles across at the widest point the reefs are ten miles
wide."

"It really is coral, then?"

"As much as any island is. The base of any coral island is limestone,
being made of the skeletons of coral polypi which have been broken and
crushed by wind and weather and beaten into stone. Just as chalk is made
of thousands of tiny shells, so coral limestone is made of myriads of
coral skeletons."

"Why, that's like sandstone," cried Colin, in a disappointed tone. "I
had an idea that coral was a sort of insect that lived in a shell and
that colonies of these grew up from the bottom of the water like trees
and when they died--millions of them--they left the shells and these
stone forests grew up and up until they reached the top of the water and
then soil was formed and that was how coral islands began."

"I'm not surprised at your thinking that," his chief replied, "lots of
people do. And though that theory is all wrong, still if it has given
folks an idea of the beauty and wonder of the world, there's no great
harm done. Plenty of people still talk about the coral 'insect.' It
never occurs to them to call an anemone an 'insect,' but they don't know
that the coral polyp is more like an anemone than anything else."

"But an anemone is a soft flabby thing that waves a lot of jelly-like
fingers about in the water."

"So does coral," was the reply, "and it eats and lives just in the same
wa