280 Mr. A. H. Hassall's Catalogue of Irish Zoophytes. 



proof that this class of bodies, though it has the vegetable 

 form, yet is not entirely of a vegetable nature," 



Among the many recent cultivators of this interesting de- 

 partment of natural history, the name of Dr. Johnston of Ber- 

 wick stands pre-eminent, whose excellent work on the Bri- 

 tish Zoophytes has done much to exalt the subject, and to 

 diffuse a more general taste for its cultivation. I trust that 

 ere long we shall be favoured with a second volume on the 

 Zoophytes of Great Britain by that gentleman. 



The term Zoophyte is applied to all those productions 

 which, bearing a strong resemblance to vegetables in form and 

 some other particulars, are yet of an animal nature. The more 

 arborescent of them are often called corallines, a name which 

 is peculiarly appropriate, being a derivative of the word coral, 

 to which they are intimately allied, and by means of which 

 such gigantic changes are daily being effected. Islands, and 

 I might almost say, without incurring the charge of exagge- 

 ration, continents are being raised from the deep abysses of the 

 ocean, to be, perchance, at some future period clothed with 

 vegetation, and peopled like unto our own fair land — to be 

 the arena on which many eventful scenes in the world's his- 

 tory are to be performed ; and these mighty results are to be 

 brought about by the agency of insects scarcely perceptible 

 to our unaided sight, but whose operations, though slow, silent 

 and invisible, are yet certain and unceasing : — 



" Unconscious, not unworthy, instruments, 

 By which a hand invisible was reaiing 

 A new creation in the seciet deep. 

 Omnipotence wronglit in them, with them, by tlicm ; 

 Hence, what Omnipotence alone could do 

 Worms did. I saw the living pile ascend, 

 'J'he mausoh um of its architects. 

 Still dying upwards as their labours closed : 

 Slime the material, but the slime was turn'd 

 To adamant by their petrific touch ; 

 Frail were their frames, ephemeral their li\es — 

 'J'heir masonry imperishable." 



In nothing is God's infinity and man's Httleness more stri- 

 kingly exhibited and contrasted than in the operations of na- 

 ture upon a grand scale, and this is particularly evident in the 

 instance of the formation of coral islands to which I have re- 

 ferred. The extreme simplicity of the means employed for 

 the attainment of such vast ends cannot but be a subject of 

 astonishment and admiration to every reflecting mind, and 

 this simplicity is apparent in all the ways and workings of 

 nature. How different is it with man's designs ; how compli- 



