100 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



joys, its storms and calms, its passions, good and evil 

 all are indifferent to the unheeding oyster. Its whole soul 

 is concentrated in itself; its body is throbbing with life 

 and enjoyment. The mighty ocean is subservient to its 

 pleasures. Invisible to human eye, a thousand vibrating 

 cilia move incessantly around every fibre of each fringing 

 leaflet. To these the rolling waves waft fresh and choice 

 food, and the flood of the current feeds the oyster, without 

 requiring an effort. Each atom of water that comes in 

 contact with its delicate gills, gives out its imprisoned air, 

 to freshen and invigorate the creature's pellucid blood. 



Here, in the lonely, weary sea, so restless and uneasy, 

 we find, moreover, that strangest of all productions, half 

 vegetable and half animal, the coral. From the tree- 

 shaped limestone, springs forth the sense-endowed arm of 

 the polypus ; it grows, it feeds, it produces others, and 

 then is turned again into stone, burying itself in its own 

 rocky home, over which new generations build at once 

 new rocky homes. 



Thus grows the many-shaped, far-branched coral-tree; 

 but where the plants of the upper world bear leaves and 

 flowers, there germinates here, from out of the stone, a 

 living, sensitive animal, clad in the gay form and bright 

 colors of flowers, and adorned with phosphorescent bril- 

 liancy. As if in a dream the animal polypus awakens in 

 the stone for a moment, and like a dream it crystallizes 

 again into stone. Yet, what no tree on earth, in all its 

 vigor and beauty, ever could do, that is accomplished by 

 these strange animal trees. They build large, powerful 

 castles, and high, lofty steeples, resting upon the very 



