170 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



Age after age ; and with filtration fine 

 Dispart from earths, and sulphurs, and saline. 

 Hence with diffusive salt old ocean steeps 

 His emerald shallows, and his sapphire deeps." 



In every department of nature there is to be found this self-ad- 

 justing principle — this beautiful and exquisite system of compen- 

 satioUf by which the operations of the grand machinery of the uni- 

 verse are maintained in the most perfect order. 



344. Thus we behold sea-shells and animalculse in a nevi^ light. 

 May we not novr cease to regard them as beings v^^hich have little 

 or nothing to do in maintaining the harmonies of creation ? On 

 the contrary, do we not see in them the principles of the most ad- 

 mirable compensation in the system of oceanic circulation ? We 

 may even regard them as regulators, to some extent, of climates 

 in parts of the earth far removed from their presence. There is 

 something suggestive, both of the grand and the beautiful, in the 

 idea that, while the insects of the sea are building up their coral 

 islands in the perpetual summer of the tropics, they are also en- 

 gaged in dispensing warmth to distant parts of the earth, and in 

 mitigating the severe cold of the Polar winter. 



Surely an hypothesis which, being followed out, suggests so 

 much design, such perfect order and arrangement, and so many 

 beauties for contemplation and admiration as does this, which, for 

 the want of a better, I have ventured to offer with regard to the 

 solid matter of the sea water, its salts and its shells — surely such 

 an hypothesis, though it be not based entirely on the results of 

 actual observation, can not be regarded as wholly vain or as al- 

 together profitless. 



