Note 53 — Chapter IX · OF NATIONAL NOSES.

“The prodigious extent of the combined and unintermitting labours of these little world-architects must be witnessed in order to be adequately conceived or realized. They have built up 400 miles of barrier-reef on the shores of Caledonia; and on the north-east coast of Australia their labours extend for 1000 miles in length; averaging a quarter of a mile in breadth, and one hundred and fifty feet in depth. The geologist, in contemplating these stupendous operations, learns to appreciate the circumstances by which were deposited, in ancient times, those mountain-masses of limestone, for the most part coralline, which abound in many parts of our native island.”—Ansted’s Ancient World, p. 32.