RELATIVES OF THE OYSTER. 215 



animalculae, and they are in such numbers that it must be 

 supposed that the dead minute animals were constantly 

 falling in showers from the sea to the bottom. 



With great truth and eloquence Dr. Chalmers has 

 remarked, as he compared the micrscope with the teles- 

 cope :- 



" The one led me to see a system in every star; the 

 other leads me to see a world in every atom. The one 

 taught me that this mighty globe, with the whole burden 

 of its people and of its countries, is but a grain of sand on 

 the high fields of immensity ; the other teaches me that 

 every grain of sand may harbour within it the tribes and 

 the families of a busy population. The one told me of the 

 insignificance of the world I tread upon ; the other redeems 

 it from all its insignificance ; for it tells me that in the 

 leaves of every forest, and in the flowers of every garden, 

 and in the waters of every rivulet, there are worlds teeming 

 with life, and numberless as are the glories of the firma- 

 ment. The one suggests to me that within and beneath 

 all that minuteness which the aided eye of man has been 

 able to explore, there may yet be regions of invisibles ; 

 and that could we draw aside the mysterious curtain that 

 veils it from our senses, we might there see a theatre of 

 as many wonders as astronomy has unfolded, a universe 

 within the compass of a point so small as to elude all the 

 powers of the microscope ; but where the wonder-working 

 God finds room for the exercise of all His attributes, where 

 He can raise another mechanism of worlds, and fill and 

 animate them with all the evidences of His glory." 



