"*
* Dana, Manual of Geology, p. 272.
Thus, in all the great periods of the earth's history of which we know
anything, a part of the then living matter has had the form of polypes,
competent to separate from the water of the sea the carbonate of lime
necessary for their own skeletons. Grain by grain, and particle by
particle, they have built up vast masses of rock, the thickness of which
is measured by hundreds of feet, and their area by thousands of square
miles. The slow oscillations of the crust of the earth, producing great
changes in the distribution of land and water, have often obliged
the living matter of the coral-builders to shift the locality of its
operations; and, by variation and adaptation to these modifications of
condition, its forms have as often changed. The work it has done in the
past is, for the most part, swept away, but fragments remain, and, if
there were no other evidence, suffice to prove the general constancy
of the operations of Nature in this world, through periods of almost
inconceivable duration.
NOTES
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
[Footnote 1: Autobiography: Huxley's account of this sketch, written in
1889, is as follows: "A man who is bringing out a series of portraits of
celebrities, with a sketch of their career attached, has bothered me
out of my life for something to go with my portrait, and to escape the
abominable bad taste of some of the notices, I have done that.
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