54 ODDICOMBE ROCK-POOL. 



with a smooth easy motion, through the surrounding 

 fluid, in a definite direction. It does not cease even 

 with the Hfe of the animal. The specimen which I 

 examined had been dead at least fifteen hours, yet 

 when I placed the torn fragments of the branchiae, one 

 after another, beneath the microscope, the energy of 

 the ciliary action, as the wave flowed with uniform 

 regularity up one side and down the other of every 

 filament, filled me with astonishment. Even the next 

 morning, twenty-six hours after death, when the 

 tissues of the filaments were partially dissolved, the 

 ciliary motion Avas still going on, on portions that 

 preserved their integrity. 



Surely, when a Christian naturalist examines the 

 more recondite anatomy, not of the human body merely, 

 but of any, even the lowest, forms of animal being, he 

 is constrained to say with the Psalmist, " I will praise 

 Thee ; for [all is] fearfully and wonderfully made : 

 marvellous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth 

 right well !" 



ODDICOMBE EOCK-POOL. 



I took another look at my pretty little rock-basin 

 at Oddicombe. It is a deep, oval, cup-hke cavity, 

 about a yard wide in the longest diameter, and of the 

 same depth, ]ie\yii out, as it were, from the solid lime- 

 stone, with as clean a surface, as if a stone-mason had 

 been at work there. It is always, of course, full of 

 water, and, except when a heavy sea is rolling in, of 

 brilHant clearness. All round the margin are growing 

 tufts of the common Coralline, forming a whitish 



