284 APPENDIX. 



" In the remote Silurian age, at the very dawn of pale- 

 zoic time, the little polyps began their appointed work. 

 Centuries, epochs, ages pass ; and still the little animals toil 

 oil. The Carboniferous age is ushered in, when, as we are 

 told, * the waters teemed with fishes of great size and strange 

 forms, and the dry land was covered with a rank and luxu- 

 riant vegetation, of ferns and coniferous trees, and strange 

 forms, like gigantic reeds and club-mosses.' 



" Still the * whirligig of time ' revolves. The Keptilian 

 age when the Ichthyosaurus, the gigantic lizard, basked in 

 the sunshine comes and goes. The Eocene, Miocene, and 

 Pliocene Epochs pass in review ; and still the industrious 

 little polyps never * strike,' nor ask for 'their time,' nor 

 demand an ' eight-hour day ' ; but, content with their hard 

 fare, they go right on, rearing beautiful submarine structures 

 in accordance with the original plans of the Great Architect. 



" Now, as the result of numberless" ages of incessant 

 labour, coral reefs appear, over which the great river of the 

 ocean, the Gulf Stream, swirls, frets and breaks, depositing 

 the sediment brought from distant climes. The polyps 

 retire (to take another contract farther out in the deep) and 

 other forces of nature continues the work. In time, the 

 coral reefs become a cluster of little islands. Meanwhile, 

 change succeeds change on the broad face of the globe. In- 

 numerable fishes fill the seas; and on land, the mastodon, 

 the glyptodon, the dinotherium, and the prehistoric elephant 

 live their appointed time, and become extinct, to give place 

 to other forms of animal life. The calm waters of the bays, 

 inlets and estuaries among the islands are well suited to the 

 habits of molluscs, crustaceans, radiates, and cephalopods ; 

 and here, oysters, clams, lobsters, sea urchins, cuttlefish, 

 octopods, the nautilus, and many other naughty things, find 

 an abode. Generation after generation, century after cen- 

 tury, living, dying and casting their untenanted shells upon 

 the substratum of coral, they are unconsciously forming a 

 bed of marl, 



