One of its arms, escaping toward the south, goes on forming the mysterious world of the coral sea.

In a space as large as four continents, the polyps, strengthened by the lukewarm water, are building up thousands of atolls, ring-shaped islands, reefs and submarine pillars that, when united together by the work of a thousand years, are going to create a new land, an exchange continent in case the human species should lose its present base in some cataclysm of Nature.
The pulse of the blue god is the tides.

The earth turns towards the moon and the stars with a sympathetic rotation like that of the flowers that turn towards the sun.

Its most movable part--the fluid mass of the atmosphere--dilates twice daily, swelling its cavities; and this atmospheric suction, the work of universal attraction, is reflected in the tidal waters.

Closed seas, like the Mediterranean, scarcely feel its effects, the tides stopping at their door.