THE LOWEE FOEMS OF LIFE. 109 



tary and other abdominal organs of man himself. But of the 

 essence or nature of the vital principle we know nothing. The 

 physio-chemico philosophers of modern days have endeavoured to 

 identify it with correlated force, and to compare it with the power 

 which forms the dead crystal. With what success this has been 

 done may be found in the new edition of Todd and Bowman's 

 " Physiology," where the masterly genius of Professor Beale has 

 shivered such a notion into a thousand atoms, none of which will 

 ever again gain either power or coherence. No ; the vital principle, 

 the first puzzle of all writers, is an ultimate fact which cannot be 

 explained by a finite mind. Chemical force can, by its power of 

 attraction, select the object with which another combines, and the 

 result is a crystal and a definite thing in nature ; but that force 

 cannot say to the dead crystal, live, and feel, and move, and think. 

 Neither can such a force say to the ultimate structure or cell, when 

 living, grow and form muscle, or nerve, or bone, or brain. The 

 Power which does this is incomprehensible to the human mind, and 

 it is simply because the finite can never, from the nature of things, 

 comprehend that which is an attribute of the Infinite. 



The sea-anemone is a pleasing study to the sea-side naturalist, 

 and to those who in their aquaria have a miniature sea in their 

 drawing-room. This is a subject over which the genius of a Gosse 

 lingers gracefully, for has he not written a book which leaves little 

 or nothing to say of all the family ? and has he not told us " who 

 is who," and given us beautiful portraits of the various branches, 

 relations, and connections of the Actiniae? Perhaps what I have 

 written may give an additional interest to the study of his book, 

 for it is surely not my intention, even had I the space, to attempt 

 any extracts from its pages. 



But we will follow the sea-anemone from the coasts of Devon to 

 the soft balmy seas of the Pacific, and we will there show how great 

 and important an agent it has been in the formation of the world. 

 We will look into the clear deep blue sea, and search there for its 

 whereabouts, and, if the eye is gladdened and the fancy charmed by 

 the panorama we witness, we shall not be in a less fitted state of 

 mind to ponder upon the grand facts which the history of the Coral 

 will unfold. The very name is suggestive, and its utterance carries 

 us back mentally to the days of our boyhood, when the mere sight 

 of those beautiful masses of curiously-wrought limestone used to 

 transport us in imagination to the Cocoa-Nut Islands and the fierce 

 savage of the Southern Seas, of which we had read in those thrilling 

 tales of adventure like Eobinson Crusoe, which make such an impres- 

 sion on the youthful mind. How often, too, do we look upon the 

 carefully-tended glass-covered specimen as a link which connects us 



