OF A FORMER WORLD. 13 



tiny workmen are effecting those mighty changes, which far 

 exceed the most remarkable labors of man. 



" Millions of millions thus from age to age, 

 With simplest skill, and toil unweariable, 

 No moment and no movement unimproved, 

 Laid line on line, on terrace terrace spread, 

 To swell the heightening, brightening gradual mound, 

 By marvellous structure climbing towards the day. 

 Each wrought alone, yet altogether wrought, 

 Unconscious, not unworthy, instruments, 

 By which a hand invisible was rearing 

 A new creation in the secret deep. 

 Omnipotence wrought in them, with them, by them; 

 Hence what Omnipotence alone could do 

 Worms did. I saw the living pile ascend, 

 The mausoleum of its architects, 

 Still dying upwards as their labors closed : 

 Slime the material, but the slime was turn'd 

 To adamant, by their petrific touch ; 

 Frail were their frames, ephemeral their lives, 

 Their masonry imperishable. All 

 Life's needful functions, food, exertion, rest, 

 By nice economy of Providence 

 Were overruled to carry on the process 

 Which out of water brought forth solid rock. 

 Atom by atom thus the burthen grew, 

 Even like an infant in the womb, till Time 

 Deliver'd ocean of that monstrous birth 

 A coral island stretching east and west." 



That those infinitesimal forms of existence, whose pres- 

 ence in our lakes, rivers, and streams, can only be made 

 manifest by the aid of the microscope, should be detected 

 in a fossil state, and that their aggregated skeletons should 

 be found to constitute the chains of hills, and the subsoil of 

 extensive districts, and that the most stupendous monuments 

 erected by man, should be composed of rocks resulting from 

 the mineralized remains of animalcules, invisible to the 

 unassisted eye, are among the most marvellous of wonders.* 



* If we apply our vision to the microscope, we behold in every leaf 

 and blade of grass, and every drop of water in which these substances have 



