MULTUM E PARVO. 



furious ocean, are produced by tiny, soft-bodied 

 sea-anemones, by atoms of pulp, sluggish and 

 seemingly helpless morsels of animated jelly, indi- 

 vidually no bigger than the smallest flower that 

 nestles in the hedge-bank— our wonder, instead of 

 being dispersed by our philosophy, is deepened 

 and incomparably augmented by it. "We feel sur- 

 prise when travellers tell us of the vast dimen- 

 sions of the Pyramids, but how utterly insignifi- 

 cant are the greatest of these when compared to 

 these mountains of stone accumulated by the 

 agency of various minute and tender animals! 

 This is a wonder which does not at first strike 

 the eye of the body, but, after reflection, the eye 

 of reason.'** 



The researches of the eminent naturalist whose 

 words I have just quoted, have shewn us that the 

 coral polype does not build from the fathomless 

 depths of sea which immediately surround these 

 reefs and islands. He seems to imply, indeed, that 

 the coral animals cannot exist at a greater depth 

 than thirty fathoms; but, whatever may be the 

 case in tropical seas, we have already seen that 

 living corals exist and build compound polypi- 

 doms at far greater depths in our northern lati- 

 tudes. Assuming, however, that no reef is com- 

 menced deeper than thirty fathoms, and that 

 below that depth the building instinct is not 

 carried on, the only hypothesis which meets all 

 the exigencies presented by the actual phenomena 

 of fringing reefs, encircling or barrier reefs, and 

 atolls or ring reefs, is that propounded and ably 

 maintained by Darwin, that the whole area of the 

 Pacific is slowly sinking; that all the reefs and 

 islands are the summits of former mountains; 

 that all the coral structures were originally at- 

 * Darwin, " Nat. Voy.," chap. xx. 

 91 



