海底兩萬里 第241期 第19章 萬尼科羅群島(3)

While cruising along only a few cable lengths from the underpinning of Reao Island, I marveled at the gigantic piece of work accomplished by these microscopic laborers. These walls were the express achievements of madrepores known by the names fire coral, finger coral, star coral, and stony coral. These polyps grow exclusively in the agitated strata at the surface of the sea, and so it's in the upper reaches that they begin these substructures, which sink little by little together with the secreted rubble binding them. This, at least, is the theory of Mr. Charles Darwin, who thus explains the formation of atolls--a theory superior, in my view, to the one that says these madreporic edifices sit on the summits of mountains or volcanoes submerged a few feet below sea level.

沿著克列蒙端尼島的懸崖僅僅走了幾百米，我對于這些微生物中的勞動者所完成的巨大工程十分贊賞。這些懸崖大半是稱為千孔珊瑚、濱珊瑚、星珊瑚和腦形珊瑚的造礁珊瑚類的杰作。造礁珊瑚類動物在海波激蕩的表面一層特別繁衍，因此，它們的造礁工作是從上層開始，漸次及于下層的，上層帶著剩余的分泌物，漸漸沉到下面去。達爾文的學(xué)說就是這樣，他應(yīng)用這學(xué)說來說明環(huán)狀珊瑚島的構(gòu)成——照我的意思，這學(xué)說比那以海面下幾米有浮出的山嶺或火山的峰頂作為造礁珊瑚的工作基地的學(xué)說，較為優(yōu)越，較為合理。

I could observe these strange walls quite closely: our sounding lines indicated that they dropped perpendicularly for more than 300 meters, and our electric beams made the bright limestone positively sparkle.

我可以挨近這些新奇的墻垣觀察，因為它們是垂直的，測探器指示的深度超過三百米，我們船上的陣陣電光把這光輝的石灰石照亮了。

In reply to a question Conseil asked me about the growth rate of these colossal barriers, I thoroughly amazed him by saying that scientists put it at an eighth of an inch per biennium.

康塞爾問我這些巨大的墻垣積累起來要花多少時間，我回答他的這個問題說，根據(jù)學(xué)者們的意見，積累八分之一寸厚的珊瑚墻需要一個世紀(jì)，即一百年左右的時間，他十分驚異。

"Therefore," he said to me, "to build these walls, it took . . . ?"

"那么，”他問我，“造成這些墻垣要多少時間呢?"

"192,000 years, my gallant Conseil, which significantly extends the biblical Days of Creation. What's more, the formation of coal-- in other words, the petrification of forests swallowed by floods-- and the cooling of basaltic rocks likewise call for a much longer period of time. I might add that those 'days' in the Bible must represent whole epochs and not literally the lapse of time between two sunrises, because according to the Bible itself, the sun doesn't date from the first day of Creation."

要十九萬二千年，老實的康塞爾，這就把《圣經(jīng)》記載的時間特別拉長了。此外，煤炭的形成，即被洪水沖積的森林的礦化作用，玄武巖的冷化作用，需要更長久的時間。再說，《圣經(jīng)》中的時間只是表明一個一個時期，并不指兩次舊出之間的時間，因為，照《圣經(jīng)》的說法，太陽并不是開夭，辟地第一天就存在。”