5 



attach itself to a rock, and continue extending its descendents or branches till solid land is 

 formed, is wonderful, as are all Nature's ways when we consider them. 



When Nature requires for her purposes, and for the exigencies to enable some of her 

 productions to increase, and for the use and necessities of some others, how wonderfully she 

 conducts her operations ; she requires an island, or perhaps to increase in size land already 

 formed, or perhaps she requires a shallow bay for them, and employs as her agent this little 

 living creature, which attaches itself to the rock, and the kind immediately begins to increase. 

 As time is of little consequence to Nature, she is in no hurry, but waits patiently till the 

 atom becomes a reef, and then an island ; or, if she will not wait, she employs other means 

 perhaps an earthquake to effect the same object, which was to create more land; or it may 

 be to make more sea, where she considers it necessary, and this she probably also does by an 

 earthquake ; and thus makes situations more suitable for such creatures as she wishes to become 

 more numerous than they were. Every difference in the depth of the water and the currents 

 and tides, and the quality of the land and what covers it, are suitable to her creatures' necessi- 

 ties, the largest of which we can easily observe and study. But, besides these, there is every 

 degree in size till we come to the smallest, and what are these? They are more likely than not 

 indistinguishable to man's unaided, or even aided, vision. We have to consider that those not 

 visible, without aided vision, have to live, but on what smaller living things do they subsist? 

 Probably on living things we have no conception of. 



