THE PAGE OF NATURE. 123 



fury of the German and Atlantic oceans ; the limestone 

 rocks, of which immense tracts of country are almost 

 entirely composed, were not formed by the gigantic re- 

 mains of megatheriums, mastodons, and other extinct 

 monsters, which lived and died amidst the wildest con- 

 vulsions of a nascent world, but by the shields and shells 

 of inconceivable myriads of organisms, to each individual 

 of which, the stage-plate of the microscope would be as 

 large a field for its gambols, as a whole country would be 

 to one man. It is not by the hurricane or the furious 

 storm that our fairest orchards and most luxuriant fields 

 are laid waste, and converted into wildernesses of skele- 

 ton leaves, and blackened and withered stalks, but by 

 the ravages of the tiniest insects, and the minutest and 

 most contemptible fungi. 



In these days of popular science, when the most abs- 

 truse subjects come to us in forms as light and easy as 

 the whisperings of confidential friends, or the chit-chat 

 of the family circle, no department of natural history is 

 more extensively and successfully studied, than that which 

 relates to the algse or sea-weeds. And this need not 

 excite surprise, for there is no class of plants more in- 

 teresting, whether we regard the beauty and splendour of 

 their colours, the elegance and variety of their forms, or 

 the romantic situations in which they occur. The in- 

 vention of that elegant ornament of the parlour and 

 drawing-room, the aquarium, now so popular, has afforded 

 great facilities for the study of these plants, under con- 

 ditions and circumstances closely analogous to those of 

 their native haunts ; and much insight has in conse- 

 quence been obtained into their functions and habits, 



