Amazon.com description: Product Description: He and trillions of his kind. He was the Coral Worm (A nthozoa, if you prefer). He and his tribe lived and died on the sea-bottom; successive generations piling higher on the skeletons 3fid life work or the life-loafing, for they were lazy atoms of those that went before. At last the coral reef crawled upward until in uncharted waters it was tall enough to smash a wooden ship-keel. Then, above the surface of the waves it nosed its way; grayish white, whalebacked. From a hundred miles distant floated a cigar-shaped mangrove-bud; bobbing vertically, through the ocean, until it chanced to touch the new-risen coral reef. The mangrove, alone of all trees, will sprout and grow in salt water. The mangroves trunk, alone of all trunks, is impervious to the corrosive action of the sea. At once the bud set to work. It drove an anchorroot into the reef, then other roots and still others. It shot up to the height of a foot or two; and thence sent thick red-brown roots straight downward into the coral again. And so on, until it had formed a tangled root-fence for many yards alongshore.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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