404 THE MICROSCOPE. 



and assist in clothing the rocks ; mosses carpet the 

 surface, seed brought hy birds, plants carried by the 

 oceanic currents, animalcules floating in the atmosphere, 

 live, propagate, and die, and are succeeded, by the assist- 

 ance their remains bestow, by more advanced vegetable 

 and animal life ; and thus generation after generation exist 

 and perish, until at length the coral island becomes a 

 paradise filled with the choicest exotics, the most beautiful 

 birds and delicious fruits, among which man may indolently 

 revel to the utmost desire of his heart. 



Dr. Maccullock, in his Highlands and Western Islands, 

 observes : " Their plants are made of stone, and they con- 

 struct islands and continents for the habitation of man. 

 The labours of a worm, which man can barely see, form 

 mountains like the Apennines, and regions to which Britain 

 is as nothing. The invisible, insensible toil of an ephe- 

 meral point, conspiring with others in one great design, 

 working unseen, unheard, but for ever guided by one 

 volition, by that One Volition which cannot err, 

 converts the liquid water into the solid rock, the deep 

 ocean into dry land ; and extends the dominions of man, 

 who sees it not, and knows it not, over regions which even 

 his ships had scarcely traversed. This is the Great Pacific 

 Ocean, destined at some future day to be a world. That 

 same Power, which has thus wrought, by means which 

 blind man would have despised as inadequate, by means 

 which he has just discovered, here too shows the versatility, 

 the contrast of its resources. In one hour it lets loose the 

 raging engines, not of its wrath, but of its benevolence ; 

 and the volcano and the earthquake lift up to the clouds 

 the prop and foundation of new worlds, that from those 

 clouds they may draw down the sources of the river, the 

 waters of fertility and plenty." 



Ehrenberg, on beholding the coral-beds in the Ked Sea, 

 exclaimed : " Where is the paradise of flowers that can 

 rival in variety and beauty these living wonders of the 

 ocean ? " 



Captain Basil Hall thus describes a coral-reef near Loo 

 Choo : " When the tide has left the rock for some time dry, 

 it appears to be a compact mass, exceedingly hard and 

 rugged ; but as the water rises, and the waves begin to 



