220 FUNCTIONS AND INSTINCTS. 



clians, and another of the Tunicaries 1 envelopes 

 the madrepores, more or less, with a milk-white 

 crust. 



The Creator, when he filled the waters of the 

 great deep with that infinite variety of animals 

 of which every day brings genera and species, 

 before unknown, to light, willed that many of 

 them should, as it were, form a body politic, con- 

 sisting of many individuals, separate and distinct 

 as inhabiting different cells, but still possessing 

 a body in common, and many of them receiv- 

 ing benefit from the systole and diastole of a 

 common organ : thus, by a material union, is 

 symbolized, what in terrestrial animal commu- 

 nities results from numerous wills uniting to 

 effect a common object. The land, as far as I 

 can recollect, exhibits no instance of an aggregate 

 animal ; nor the ocean of one, which, like the 

 beaver, lemming, bee, wasp, ant, white ant, and 

 many others, forms associations to build and in- 

 habit a common house, and rear a common family. 

 Probably the nature of the different mediums 

 these several animals inhabit is the cause of this 

 diversity ; and Providence, when it willed the 

 peopling of the waters, as well as of the earth 

 and air, into which the effluxes of light and heat 

 from the central orb could not so penetrate and 

 be diffused as to act with the same power arid 



1 Didemnum candidum, Sav. 



