94 MONOGRAPH OF DURA DEN. 



ing in all climes, and simultaneously in every latitude, breasting 

 the ocean wave, and rearing up their massive courses of natural 

 masonry. 



The coral classes are distinguished in the Linnsean ar- 

 rangements into several genera, and the analogy as to size 

 and the products of their working, is here wonderfully main- 

 tained betwixt the extinct and the existing species of polyps. 

 As, for example, in the diminutive ferns, horse-tails, and club- 

 mosses of our northern latitudes, there are the allied families of 

 the tropical aborescent kinds in the largest forms of trees, so 

 among the tuhipores, cellepores, and antipathes, now so active 

 and skilful in rearing their huge piles of coral reef in the tropical 

 seas, there are their representative species of Fascicula, Hydra, 

 and others, found on the shores of Greenland, and still plying 

 their pigmy functions amid the rigours of the Northern Ocean. 

 Thus nature chngs to her types of animal as of vegetable life 

 through all time. Thus she enlightens our scepticism, and 

 removes our doubts, as to the surprising means by which she 

 accomplishes her purposes on the greater as on the smaller 

 scale ; and shows, by what she is doing now, through these 

 humble instruments, she has done ages ago, in constructing the 

 fabric of our earthy dwelling, and in storing the inner chambers 

 with the most valuable materials for our use and comfort. The 

 busy artisans that now rise upon the ocean surge, are one and 

 the same in nature, habit, and toiling aim, with those earlier 

 denizens of the sea whose wondrous structures rose above the 

 breakers, elaborating their food and their coral bed from the 

 elements of the same water, and manifesting their instincts as 

 the voice of the same God who commanded the water^i to bring- 

 forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life. 



" Even as ono essence of pervading light 

 Shines in the brightness of ten thousand stars, 

 And the meek worm that feeds her lonely lamp 

 Couched in the dewy grass." 



The mind that sees not in these singular operations evidences 

 of design, foresight, and purpose, can have no proper conception 



