12 



This contrivance is called a compensation ; ami a chronometer that is well regulated, and properly com- 

 pensated, will perform its office with certainty, and preserve its rate under all the vicissitudes of heat and cold 

 to which -t may be exposed. 



So too in the clock-work of the ocean, and the machinery of the universe : order and regularity are 

 maintained by a system of compensations. A celestial body as it revolves around its sun, flies off under the 

 influence of centrifugal force ; but immediately the forces of compensation begin to act: the planet is brought 

 back to its elliptical path, and held in the orbit for which its mass, its motions and its distance were adjusted. 

 Its compensation is perfect. 



So too with the salts and the shells of the sea in the machinery ot the ocean : from them are derived 

 principles of compensation, the most perfect; through their agency the undue effects oT heat and cold, of storm 

 and rain in disturbing the equ'librium and producing thereby currents in the sea, are compensated, regulated, 

 and controlled. 



In every department of nature there is to be found this self-adjusting principle — this beautiful and 

 exquisite system of compensation by which the operations of the grand machinery of the universe are main- 

 tained iti the most perfect order. 



Thus we behold sea shells and animalculffi in a new light. May we not now cease to regard them as 

 beings which h?ve' little or noth-ng to do in maintaining the harmonies of creation ? On the contrary, do we 

 not see in them, the principles of the most admirable compensation 'n the system cf oceanic circulation? We 

 may even regard them as regulators, to some extent, of climates in parts of the earth far removed from their 

 presence. There is something suggestive, both of the grand and beautiful, in the idea that while the insects 

 of the sea are building up their coral islands in the perpetual summer of the tropics, they are also engaged in 

 dispensing warmth to distant parts of the earth, and in mitigating the severe cold of the Polar winter. 



Surely an hypothesis which, being followed out, suggests po much design, such perr^^c. order and arrange- 

 ment, and so many beauties for contemplation and admiration as does this, which for the want of a better I 

 have ventured to offer with regard to the solid matter o." the sea water, its salts and its shells, surely such an 

 hypothesis, though it be not based entirely on the results of actual observation, cannot be regarded as wholly 

 vain, or as altogether profitless. 

 May, 1852. 



