The discoverer of the key to these problems was a man whose
name you know very well in connection with other matters, and I should
not wonder if some of you have heard it said that he was a superficial
kind of person who did not know much about the subject on which he
writes. He was Mr. Darwin, and this brilliant discovery of his was made
public thirty years ago, long before he became the celebrated man he
now is; and it was one of the most singular instances of that
astonishing sagacity which he possesses of drawing consequences by way
of deduction from simple principles of natural science--a power which
has served him in good stead on other occasions. Well, Mr. Darwin,
looking at these curious difficulties and having that sort of knowledge
of natural phenomena in general, without which he could not have made a
step towards the solution of the problem, said to himself--"It is
perfectly clear that the coral which forms the base of the atolls and
fringing reefs could not possibly have been formed there if the level
of the sea has always been exactly where it is now, for we know for
certain that these polypes cannot build at a greater depth than 20 to
25 fathoms, and here we find them at 50 to 100 fathoms.
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