APPARENT EXCEPTIONS. 



I 99 



ary ages must have been glorious things indeed. 

 Even now there is abundant evidence that al- 

 though Man was intended to admire beauty, 

 beauty was not intended only for Man's admira- 

 tion. Nowhere is ornament more richly given, 

 nowhere is it seen more separate from the use, 

 than in those organisms of whose countless mil- 

 lions the microscope alone enables a few men for 

 a few moments to see a few examples. There is 

 no better illustration of this than a class of forms 

 belonging to the border-land of animal and vege- 

 table life called the Diatomacece, which, though 

 invisible to the naked eye, play an important part 

 in the economy of Nature. They exist almost 

 everywhere, and of their remains whole strata, and 

 even mountains, are in great part composed. They 

 have shells of pure silex, and these, each after its own 

 kind, are all covered with the most elaborate orna- 

 ment — striated, or fluted, or punctured, or dotted 

 in patterns which are mere patterns, but patterns 

 of perfect, and sometimes of most complex beauty. 

 No graving done with the graver's tool can equal 

 that work in gracefulness of design, or in delicacy 

 and strength of touch. Yet it is impossible to look 



