INTRODUCTION. 27 



' History of British Zoophytes/ — '' every one has read of 

 the coral islands of the tropical seas — how they grow from 

 the fathomless profound, and how they rise to-day by the 

 operations of puny insects, which, in countless numbers, 

 and in untold generations, effectuate changes on our globe, 

 superior, perhaps, to what all other animals united do, 

 and to which the greatest achievements of intellectual man 

 sink to insignificance/' Still stronger is the language 

 of Dr. Macculloch, in his ' History of the Western Islands/ 

 ''Their plants,'" says he, "are made of stone, and they 

 build dwellings. Dwellings ! they construct islands and 

 continents for the habitation of man. The labours of a 

 worm which man can hardly see, form mountains like the 

 Apennines, and regions to which Britain is as nothing. The 

 invisible, insensible toil of an ephemeral point, conspiring 

 with others in one great design — working unseen, unheard, 

 but for ever guided by one great volition, — by that one voli- 

 tion which cannot err, — converts the liquid water into the 

 solid rock, the deep ocean into dry land, and extends the 

 dominions of man — who sees it not, and knows it not, — 

 over regions which even his ships had scarcely traversed. 

 This is the great Pacific Ocean, destifled at some future pe- 

 riod to be a world. That same power which has thus wrought 



