POPULAR ERRORS CORRECTED 



things about us, sees everywhere, in the dim limits of 

 vision, the word mystery. Surely there is no reason why 

 the simplest of organisms should bear the impress most 

 strongly. If we are astonished that so great deeds should 

 proceed from the little and low, it is because we fail to 

 appreciate that little things, even the least of living or 

 physical existences in nature, are, under God, expressions 

 throughout of comprehensive laws, laws that govern alike 

 the small and the great. 



" It is not more surprising, nor a matter of more diffi- 

 cult comprehension, that a polyp should form structures 

 of stone (carbonate of lime) called coral, than that the 

 quadruped should form its bones, or the mollusk its shell. 

 The processes are similar, and so the result. In each 

 case it is a simple animal secretion ; a secretion of stony 

 matter from the aliment which the animal receives, pro- 

 duced by the parts of the animal fitted for this secreting 

 process ; and in each, carbonate of lime is a constituent, 

 or one of the constituents, of the secretion. 



" This power of secretion is then one of the first and 

 most common of those that belong to living tissues; and 

 though differing in different organs according to their 

 end or function, it is all one process, both in its nature 

 and cause, whether in the animalcule or man. It belongs 

 eminently to the lowest kinds of life. These are the best 

 stone-makers; for in their simplicity of structure they 

 may be almost all stone and still carry on the processes 

 of nutrition and growth. Throughout geological time 

 they were the agents appointed to produce the material 

 of limestones, and also to make even the flint and many 

 of the siliceous deposits of the earth's formations. 



" Coral is never, therefore, the handiwork of the many- 

 armed polyps; for it is no more a result of labor than 

 bone-making in ourselves. And again, it is not a collec- 

 tion of cells into which the coral animals may withdraw 

 for concealment any more than the skeleton of a dog is 

 its house or cell ; for every part of the coral or corallum, 

 as it is now called in science of a polyp, in most reef- 

 making species, is enclosed within the polyp, where it 

 was formed by the secreting process." 



In 1853 Dana wrote the following letter to Norton's 

 Literary Gazette : 



211 



