ZOOPHYTA HELIANTHOIDA. 203 



our northern shores, when they are big with numerous eggs. But 

 in the Actini;e, ova in every state of developement may be seen 

 in the same individual throughout the year ; perhaps, however, 

 they are most abundantly laid in autumn. They are usually of 

 a roundish figure, and, like the gemmules of polypes in general, 

 contractile and motive, being carried about from the action of 

 the cilia that clothe the surface. " Under the microscope they 

 prove of diversified form, many resembling flattened pease, some 

 elongated or exhibiting irregular prominences, some almost 

 spherical, others as if composed of two or even of three un- 

 equal spheres, and some which cannot be referred to any par- 

 ticular figure." After moving about for several days, during 

 which their forms suffer some slight change, they insensibly 

 relax in their activity, the cilia disappear, and, having become 

 stationary, each rapidly runs through the stages of develope- 

 ment that lead it up to the similitude of its parent. 



Every one has read of the coral islands of tropical seas ; how 

 they grow from the fathomless profound, and how they rise to 

 day by the operations of puny insects, which, in countless num- 

 bers, and in untold generations, effectuate changes on our globe 

 superior, perhaps, to what all other animals united do, and com- 

 pared to which the greatest achievements of " intellectual man," 

 sink to insignificance.* Geology teaches us that with these 

 worms the great work of creation began ; and from that uncer- 



* " Their plants 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 barely see, form mountains like the Apennines, and 

 regions to which Britain is as nothing. The invisible, insensible toil, of an ephe- 

 meral point, conspiring with others in one great design, working unseen, un- 

 heard, but for ever guided by one volition, by that One Volition 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 re- 

 gions which even his ships had scarcely traversed. This is the Great Pacific 

 Ocean ; destined, at some future day, to be a world. That same power which 

 has thus wrought by means which blind man would have despised as inadequate, 

 by means which he has but just discovered, here too shows the versatility, the 

 contrast of its resources. In one hour it lets loose the raging engines, not of 

 its wrath, but of its benevolence ; and the volcano and the earthquake lift up to 

 the clouds, the prop and foundation of new worlds, that from those clouds they 

 may draw down the sources of the river, the waters of fertility and plenty." 

 Dr Macculloch, Highlands and West. Islands, Vol. iv. p. 14. 



