Fee] AND SYMBOLS. 119 



the horrible spell of fear which, whether acting on man or bird, 

 lias for the time the power to snatch from the muscles and 

 nerves all their vigour and tone, and deprive its subject of all 

 capacity for action. BE. 



The Might of the Feeble. 



Before despising what may appear feeble and impotent, it is 

 worth while to pause to learn a lesson from some of Professor 

 Bailey's examinations. Professor Bailey having examined deep- 

 sea soundings obtained by Brooke's deep-sea-sounding apparatus 

 from the bottom of the ocean, at the depth of more than two 

 miles, found them, he tells us, all filled with microscopic shells. 

 They were chiefly made up of perfect little calcareous shells 

 (Foraminiferce), and contained also a small number of siliceous 

 shells (Diatomacce). It would seem that these little marine 

 insects, which, when alive, glow and sparkle on the surface of 

 the sea, and there build their habitations, when they die sink in 

 vast multitudes, and settle at the bottom, as if for the purpose 

 of filling up the vast chasms of the ocean. They are the atoms 

 of which mountains are formed, plains spread out. Our marl- 

 beds, the clay in our river bottoms, large portions of many of 

 the great basins of the earth, are composed of the remains of 

 just such little creatures as these, which the ingenuity of Brooke 

 and the industry of Berryman have enabled us to fish up from 

 the depth of more than two miles (twelve thousand feet) below 

 the sea-level. These foraminiferce, therefore, when living, may 

 have been preparing the ingredients for the fruitful soil of a 

 land that some earthquake or upheaval in ages far away in the 

 future may be sent to cast up from the bottom of the sea for 

 man's use. Now who does not recognise in history that some- 

 thing of a similar process goes on all the world over ; that the 

 influences which appeared merely transient have not been so, 

 but have reappeared in other forms and places ; that the little 

 things which were forgotten have nob been obliterated, but have 

 been accumulating and gathering power ; that the multiplication 

 of little things has produced vast changes ; that society is not 

 renovated by rapid alterations upon its surface, but by the 

 operation of an immense number of individuals ; that, in fact, 



