14 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 



Every walk we take offers subjects for profound consider- 

 ation every pebble that attracts our notice, matter for 

 serious reflection ; and contemplating the innumerable proofs 

 afforded us of the incessant dissolution and renovation 

 which are taking place around us, we feel the force and 

 beauty of the exclamation of the poet, 



" My heart is awed within me, when I think 

 Of the great miracle which still goes on 

 In silence round me the perpetual work 

 Of Thy creation, finished, yet renewed 

 For ever !" 



become decomposed, a world of life and being, unknown, unseen by the 

 feeble human eye. We have only to cut a little hay into small pieces with 

 a pair of scissors, put the pieces into a saucer full of water, and, let 

 them stand for a week, when a film will appear on the surface, which we 

 have but to take off with a spoon, put it under the microscope, and we have 

 then before us in the mere drop of water a world of animated beings of high 

 order of organization, possessing heads, eyes, with systems nervous, circu- 

 latory, respiratory, and digestive, yet the creatures themselves so infinitely 

 minute as to be perfectly invisible to the most acute and perfect sight. The 

 animalculae form, in fact, one of the most important realms in the vast 

 empire of Nature, and so vast are their numbers, their species and the 

 diversified phenomena of their existence, that, as with the vast and un 

 numbered orbs above us, the mind is lost in the immensity of the contem- 

 plation; we find that the infinitely minute, like the infinitely magnificent, 

 transcends our powers of observation, and we are left to admire, to won- 

 der, and adore . 



