234 THE MICROSCOPE. 



seed brought by birds, plants carried by the oceanic currents, animal- 

 cules floating in the atmosphere, live, propagate, and die, and are suc- 

 ceeded, by the assistance 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 construct islands and conti- 

 nents 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 un- 

 seen, unheard, but for ever guided by one volition, by that One Voli- 

 tion 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 V 



In the Narrative of tlw Surveying Voyage of H.M.S. Fly, J. B. 

 Jukes, Esq., naturalist of the expedition, thus writes : " In a small 

 bight of the inner edge of the coral reef was a nook, where the ex- 

 treme slope was well exposed, and where every coral was in full life 

 and luxuriance. Smooth round masses of meandrinse and astrese 

 were contrasted with delicate, leaf-like, and cup-shaped expansions of 

 explanarise, and with an infinite variety of branching madreporae, and 

 some with mere finger-shaped projections ; others with large branching 

 stems; and others again exhibiting an elegant assemblage of interlacing 

 twigs, of the most delicate and exquisite workmanship. Their colours 

 were unrivalled : vivid greens, contrasting with more sober browns or 



