THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 115 



(for neither teetli nor jaws is a fit word for it,) is 

 inclosed within an ever-growing limestone castle, to 

 the architecture of which the Eddystone and the 

 Crystal Palace are bungling heaps ; without arms or 

 legs, eyes or ears, and yet capable, in spite of his 

 perpetual imprisonment, of walking, feeding, and 

 breeding, doubt it not, merrily enough. But this 

 result has been attained at the expense of a compli- 

 cation of structure, which has baffled all human 

 analysis and research into final causes. As much 

 concerning this most miraculous of families as is 

 needful to be known, and ten times more than is 

 comprehended, may be read in Professor Harvey's 

 Sea-Side Book, pp. 142 — 148, — pages from which you 

 will probably arise with a dizzy sense of the infinity 

 of nature, and a conviction that the Creative Word, 

 so far from having commenced, as some fancy, with 

 the siuiplest, and, as it were, easiest forms of life, 

 took delight, if I may so speak, in solving the most 

 difficult and complicated problems first of all, with 

 a certain divine prodigality of wisdom and of power ; 

 and that before the mountains were brought forth, or 

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