THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 79 



In the countries where they abound, those mischievous 

 living reef-builders, as some slight compensation, render 

 certain services to man. The encrusting polypidoms some- 

 times form thick and very comjDact layers, which are made 

 use of as building stone. Forskal, who explored the shores 

 of the Eed Sea, says that the inhabitants of Suez and 

 Djeddah carry off masses of madrepore as much as twenty- 

 five feet long, and that they build all their houses with 

 them. My learned friend, P. E. Botta, told me that in 

 certain villages in the Sandwich Islands the dwellings are 

 built solely of such materials. 



Thus man constructs his abodes with the handiwork of 

 these petty architects, the Polypi. 



Each species has its own separate mission and form. 

 Xear our reef-builders live other polypidoms, which, instead 

 of encrusting the rocks, display themselves on their surface 

 like a vegetable forest, the petrified branches of which 

 brave the fury of the billows. Some have so exactly the 

 same physiognomy as our plants, that the old botanists 

 without hesitation classed them among the productions of 

 their domain. Others spread out in vast cup-shaped 

 forms, one rising above the other ; as may be seen in the 

 " Car of Neptune," the ruler of the seas. 



from addressing a hymn to the Creator of so many marvels. "In the researches 

 to -which I devoted myself," says the English naturalist, " scenes altogether new 

 were unrolled before my eyes, arousing in me a feeling of admiration and aston- 

 ishment at the diversity and extent of life scattered through the universe. If 

 then such sentiments were excited in me by the facts which I have related, and 

 by these marvels of animated nature where its existence was not even suspected, 

 then without doubt minds more learned, and endowed with a greater power of 

 penetration, will find, at some future day, new facts to be recognized, and new 

 proofs to be revealed, if that were necessary, of one unicjue will, one omnipotence, 

 which created, and which now preserves the 'great whole' in all its beauty and 

 perfection." 



