186 FUNCTIONS AND INSTINCTS. 



animals, especially sea-urchins, which from this 

 circumstance the common people know by the 

 name of chalk-eggs, and which, we learn from 

 Captain Beechey, abound on the submerged 

 ledges of some coral islands ; and at the same 

 period, it is surely no improbable supposition, 

 under the directing hand of Him who willed 

 to destroy the earth by the waters of a flood, 

 and at the same time determined, according 

 to the good pleasure of his will, the precise 

 mode of its renovation, that in the course of the 

 rise, prevalence, or subsidence of the mighty 

 waters, which, for the principal part of a year, 

 acted with irresistible force upon the earth, 

 considerable additions might be made from the 

 debris of the earth's disrupted crust to the reefs 

 of coral that were left unsubverted, and so many 

 islands be formed or enlarged. 



When the Creator formed the coral animals, 

 what foresight, as well as power and wisdom did 

 he manifest ! That a minute pouch of animated 

 matter, with no other organs than a few tentacles 

 surrounding its mouth, should be fitted to secrete 

 calcareous particles from food collected by it, to 

 transpire or regurgitate them so as to construct 

 for itself a limestone house, and should be em- 

 powered perpetually to send forth germes that 

 could also act the same part, is in itself suffici- 

 ently wonderful ; but that, in process of time, 

 these animals, by their combined efforts, should 



