Bic ON THE CORALS OF THE 
an elevated and bleak interior, as different in its temperature 
and productions from the sea-coast, as the pine-covered sides 
of the Alps, where they rise towards the snow line, are differ- 
ent in their temperature and productions from the rich vine- 
bearing valleys which they overlook. 
I remark, in the second place, that the occurrence in the 
Oolite of those boring shells of which I have laid specimens 
before the Society is not without interest, as in some measure 
illustrative of that unity of plan on which the Creator has 
wrought in all the geologic periods, and which serves so strik- 
ingly to indicate the identity of the Worker. Those four mas- 
ter ideas embodied in the animal kingdom which furnished 
Cuvier with his principles of classification, each forming the 
centre of a great division, seem to have been equally the master 
ideas of all the geologic creations. So far as we know, animal 
life existed at all times, when it existed at all, in its four master 
types, and no more; and these in the Oolitic ages, — life radi- 
ating round a centre, as in the Isastrea, — life lodged within a 
series of rings, as in the annelids and the crustacea, — life 
combined with a duality of corresponding parts, as in the cut- 
tle-fishes and the clams, — and life associated with a brain and 
vertebral column, as in fishes and reptiles,— were not less 
prominently developed than now. Had a Cuvier then existed 
to write the history of animated nature, the various classes 
would have occupied very different proportional spaces in his 
“ Animal Kingdom ” from that occupied by those of the present 
time ; but the master divisions, — vertebrata, mollusca, articu- 
lata, and radiata, — would have been the same. For of all 
the creations, I repeat, in the leading idea there has been no 
change. Two of these we find exemplified before us in single 
specimens, — those in which the lithodomi lie sepultured in 
cavities hollowed in Isastrea; and we are enabled to trace this 
identity of idea into yet minuter ramifications, when we thus 
