THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 93 
model, by adding new organs, and taking away old 
ones, in one direction the whole family of Actiniz 
(sea-anemones), and in a quite opposite one the 
Holothurie, those strange sea-cucumbers, with their 
mouth-fringe of feathery gills, of which you shall 
see some anon. Thus there has been, in the 
Creative Mind, as it gave life to new species, a 
development of the idea on which older species 
- were created, in order—we may fancy—that every 
mesh of the great net might gradually be supplied, 
and there should be no gaps in the perfect variety 
of Nature’s forms. This development is one which 
we must believe to be at least possible, if we allow 
that a Mind presides over the universe, and not 
a mere brute necessity, a Law (absurd misnomer, 
without a Lawgiver; and to it (strangely enough 
coinciding here and there with the Platonic doctrine 
of Eternal Ideas existing in the Divine Mind) all 
fresh inductive discovery seems to point more and 
more. 
Let me speak freely a few words on this important 
matter. Geology has disproved the old popular 
