36 KAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



and detach from its rocky sides the millions of oysters 

 which daily load our tables ; none of these are re- 

 quired ; we need only walk along the shores from 

 which the sea has just retreated. An indifferent or 

 careless observer might, indeed, perceive nothing 

 more than sand, mud, and stones. But pause a 

 a moment, stoop, and look down at your feet, and 

 everywhere you will see life teeming around you in 

 the form of myriads of strangely shaped and mar- 

 vellously organised beings. First there are bodies 

 formed like stones, then there are stones which have 

 been in turn transferred from the animal to the 

 vegetable kingdom * ; here we meet with plants so 

 nearly allied to animals that they have long been 

 classed amongst them f ; next we encounter animals, 

 which so closely resemble plants in respect to their 

 stems, branches, and buds, that naturalists for ages 

 believed in their vegetable nature. J On every side 

 the sands and mud have been disturbed, tracked, 

 burrowed, and pierced by marine worms ; the stones 

 are covered with molluscs, polypes, and zoophytes of 

 every kind, and even the very rocks seem rent 



* The greater part of the Nuttipores, -which were at one time 

 ranked amongst plants, and subsequently among the Polypes, by the 

 side of the Millepores, have been found by M. Decaisne to be mere 

 stony concretions. 



f The Corallina, -which has successively been placed in the three 

 kingdoms of nature, is decidedly an alga, and consequently a plant, 

 as M. Decaisne has shown by his researches. These plants, how- 

 ever, become very rapidly encrusted with calcareous salts, a circum- 

 stance which explains the difficulties attending their examination, 

 and the errors to which it has given rise. 



J [A brief notice of the history of this controversy is given in the 

 Appendix, Note V.] 



