In other words, the facts of physical geography
precisely and exactly correspond with the hypothesis which accounts for
the infinite varieties of coral reefs.
One other point, before I conclude, about this matter. These reefs, as
you have just perceived, are in a most singular and unexpected manner
indications of physical changes of elevations and depressions going on
upon the surface of the globe. I dare say it may have surprised you to
hear me talk in this familiar sort of way of land going up and down; but
it is one of the universal lessons of geology that the land is going
down and going up, and has been going up and down, in all sorts of
places and to all sorts of distances, through all recorded time.
Geologists would be quite right in maintaining the seeming paradox that
the stable thing in the world is the fluid sea and the shifting thing
is the solid land. That may sound a very hard saying at first, but the
more you look into geology, the more you will see ground for believing
that it is not a mere paradox.
In an unexpected manner, again, these reefs afford us not only an
indication of change of place, but they afford an indication of lapse
of time.
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