100 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 



earth, sea, air, and water, as parts of a machine, pieces 

 of mechanism not made with hands, but to which never- 

 theless certain offices have been assigned in the terrestrial 

 economy. It is good and profitable to seek to find out 

 these offices, and point them out to our fellows; and 

 when, after patient research, I am led to the discovery 

 of any one of them, I feel with the astronomer of old 

 as though I had 'thought one of God's thoughts' — and 

 tremble. Thus as we progress with our science we are 

 permitted now and then to point out here and there in 

 the physical machinery of the earth a design of the Great 

 Architect when He planned it all. 



"Take the little nautili. Where do the fragile crea- 

 tures go? What directing hand guides them from sea 

 to sea? What breeze fills the violet sails of their frail 

 little craft, and by whose skill is it enabled to brave the 

 sea and defy the fury of the gale? What mysterious 

 compass directs the flotilla of these delicate and graceful 

 argonauts? Coming down from the Indian Ocean, and 

 arriving off the stormy cape, they separate — the one part 

 steering for the Pacific, the other for the Atlantic Ocean. 

 Soon the ephemeral life that animates these tiny navi- 

 gators will be extinct; but the same power which cared 

 for them in life now guides them in death, for though 

 dead their task in the physical economy of our planet is 

 not finished, nor have they ceased to afford instruction 

 in philosophy. The frail shell is now to be drawn to 

 distant seas by the lower currents. Like the leaf carried 

 through the air by the wind, the lifeless remains descend 

 from depth to depth by an insensible fall even to the 

 appointed burial place on the bottom of the deep ; there 

 to be collected into heaps and gathered into beds which 



