He wrote to his
mother of his visit: "This island is, you know, the scene of Saint
Pierre's beautiful story of Paul and Virginia, over which I suppose most
people have sentimentalized at one time or another of their lives.
Until we reached here I did not know that the tale was like the lady's
improver--a fiction founded on fact, and that Paul and Virginia were at
one time flesh and blood, and that their veritable dust was buried at
Pamplemousses in a spot considered as one of the lions of the place, and
visited as classic ground."]
[Footnote 123: Mr. Darwin's coral reefs: The Structure and Distribution
of Coral Reefs, published in 1848.]
[Footnote 124: Professor Jukes (1811-1869): an English geologist.]
[Footnote 125: Mr. Dana (1813-1895): a well-known American geologist and
mineralogist; a professor at Yale from 1845. He wrote a number of books
among which is Coral and Coral Reefs.]
[Footnote 126: Jurassic period: that part of the geological series which
is older than the Cretaceous and newer than the Triassic; so called from
the predominance of rocks of this age in the Jura Mountains. The three
great divisions of fossiliferous rocks are called the Triassic, the
Jurassic, and the Cretaceous.]
REFERENCE BOOKS
The following reference books are suggested for a more complete
treatment of various points in the text:--Andrews' History of England.
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