The coral island must have its foundation in the bottom of the ocean, from which the little architects must raise it in successive layers, till it reaches the surface of the waves, even should the depth be thousands of feet, or even fathoms. What an insignificant proportion, then, must the visible extent of any coralline archipelago bear to the mass of matter which lies concealed under water, and forms its basis and foundation! Then, the creatures in question seem to observe a kind of economy in their architecture, and never make the inferior portions of their erections broader, or perhaps so broad, as the upper surface is intended to be; for deep water is almost always found at the edge of a coral reef; which fact proves that it does not rise from its foundation in the form of a pyramid, but that it is actually, from summit to base, a vast pillar or column of the same thickness. Indeed, some curious speculations have been raised, as to whether the tiny architects are not still more economical of material and labour.

The coral structure having been raised to the surface of the waters, the insects necessarily sus pend their labours, for it is only under water that they are so industrious. But, nevertheless, the half-submerged island acquires, in the course of time, an increase of elevation from other sources, as from shells and sea-weed, and various marine exuvia, which become entangled by its rugged surface, and are gradually fitted to support vegetation. The cocoa nut, which, owing to its buoyancy and its protecting shell, is of all other fruits or seeds the best able to float long upon the wave without

injury to its power of germination, is soon accidentally thrown upon the coral island and becomes a tree. Then the palm species appear in single stems, which from afar sailors have described as resembling the small masts of vessels. Afterwards other trees and plants are observed to take up their abodes in the new island; and, finally, the whole becomes a wooded scene, flourishing in comparative luxuriance, and all arising from the increasing labour of the coral insect.

After having busied ourselves in the examination of the large number of beautiful corals taken from the deeps of the Indian Ocean, and of the innumerable corallines of our own and neighbouring coasts; then endeavouring to comprehend in the same view the flower-like and branching. madrepores, the tubipores, the sea pens, the sponges, and the zoophytes; moreover, turning to the scientific accumulations of similar bodies in a fossil state, in several public and private cabinets; still further striving to include retrospectively these thousands of stony corals in our view of this kingdom in general; and endeavouring to grasp the whole, extinct and fossilized, existing and ocean-inhabiting corals, madrepores, corallines, and the like, in one comprehensive view, we have experienced a feeling of admiration which we can scarcely hope to transfer to those who have not laboured to take in the same extensive kingdom of creation in one simultaneous glance.

Then, conceiving all these restored to the oceans and seas whence they have been derived, and all in full life of their kind, together with

the innumerable similar existences which have never yet been beheld by human eye, but which are passing their secret times in the water-locked caves of the unfathomable ocean,-strange, indeed, is it that so little importance has been attached to this wonderful whole, and that so many centuries have elapsed during which man has scarcely bestowed a thought on its existence !

But, when some of these productions have been further examined with the magnifying glass, and others, of the minuter kinds, with the microscope; when the star-like cell of the madrepore, and its finely radiated structure, the vesicles of the sertularia, and the plumes and seeming flower cups of the inconceivably delicate corallines, and the tiny flustra, have all been viewed-then these feelings of admiration, and regret at man's neglect, have been powerfully strengthened.

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Lastly, when a further use of the most powerful microscopes has manifested that these structures, tiny, or not considerable, in themselves, are the habitations of animated existence; that in the minute flustra foliacea, which is scarcely more than a speck to the naked eye, there are as many, at least, as 36,000 living beings, all actively employed in the seizure of food, all working their arms, and rapidly vibrating the cilia which cover them; when, again, a portion of the flaxen flustra is examined, and the computation is made that in this species there are more than

The writer has just seen a little volume on this subject, which he strongly recommends. It is entitled, "Curiosities of Animal Life, with the Recent Discoveries of the Microscope," and is published by the Religious Tract Society.

eighteen cells in a square line, and 1800 in a square inch of surface, and that, as the branches of an ordinary specimen present about ten square inches of surface, it has more than 18,000 polyps, 396,000 arms, and 39,600,000 cilia; when we cursorily multiply these structures, and strive to attain, in an imaginary simultaneous view, the whole world of microscopic living animals, which both have been, and are, at this passing moment, exerting the full powers of their little life and energy, and sensibility to external impressionsin stretching forth their petal-like arms for the capture of their still minuter prey, in converting this invisible food into all the requisites of lifesupporting nourishment, in forming their separate cells, and adding, as it were, house to house, and street to street, and town to town, and city to city, until, for many dangerous miles, the immeasurable ocean is walled up with an aggregation of gigantic structures raised by the increasing labours of beings too small for our unaided perception;-when all these things swell up before our imagination, man is lost in wonder at a world scarcely thought of before! He is even tempted to think that the far-stretching coral reefs, and the subaqueous forests of coral branches, and the marine fields of those ocean flowers, the madrepores, with their millions upon millions of tiny inhabitants, are, in the insignificance of their dimensions, compared with the mightiness of their fabrics, a mockery of man, and all his laboured architecture. They congregate by millions where he gathers by units; they rear palaces upon immovable foundations, where he timidly sails in the

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tossed and often wrecked vessel. In their little hives of swarming life and activity, they endlessly labour, adding accretion to accretion; beginning with an invisible atom, and finishing with a terrific though sunken mountain. They seem not to need rest, and they wander not in search of the food that is sufficient for them. The ocean is theirs, and they populate it; the ocean is theirs, and they fashion islands in it; the ocean is theirs, and they raise in it elevated ridges, and sink in it yawning valleys. Truly the Lord is a God of wonders, when he creates unnumbered beings to live, and feed, and labour in depths which no man has sounded, and in watery chambers whence a hardly won fragment, or a cast-off relic, is the sole treasure which mortals can obtain !

CHAPTER IV.

THE STARRY HEAVENS.

Ir can only be permitted to us to notice, as most consonant with our general design, some of the most prominent discoveries and facts of interest, relating to the earth, the sun, the moon, and the southern constellations, with the variations of celestial scenery produced by the traveller's change of position on our globe.

In directing attention to the starry heavens, we do not presuppose particular acquaintance with any but the most obvious facts. Men will travel through their own country, and occasionally traverse others, almost totally forgetful of the planets above them. They will accurately