108 



SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



sissippi, flourished on the great submarine plateau luxuri- 

 ant plantations of these little lily-animals. And these were 

 interspersed with other plant-like forms — the coral animals 

 — which reared their marble domes and uplifted their ar- 

 borescent structures upon the same soil which supported 

 the encrinite and formed the grazing-ground of tribes of 

 molluscous beings. 



"Deep in the wave is a coral grove, 

 Where the purple mullet and goldfish rove ; 

 Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue, 

 That never are wet with falling dew, 

 But in bright and changeful beauty shine, 

 Far down in the green and grassy brine. 

 The floor is of sand, like the mountain drift, 



And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow ; 

 From coral rocks the sea-plants lift 



Their boughs where the tides and billows flow ; 

 ******* 



While far below in the peaceful sea 



The-purple mullet and goldfish rove, 

 Where the waters murmur tranquilly 



Through the bending twigs of the coral grove." 



Here was beauty, here was sensitive enjoyment, lavished 

 by Nature upon these humble forms at this remote age of 

 the world, and in these " dark, unfath- 

 omed caves of ocean," with the same 

 liberal hand which adorns the modern 

 landscape for the admiration of intelli- 

 gent man. Here again were trilobites 

 — not the same species as had been 

 swept from being by the convulsions 

 which marked the close of the last 

 epoch — but articulated animals, con- 

 formed to the same family plan and 

 features as their extinct predecessors, 

 yet as easily distinguished as a wasp 

 Ig the Trenton plnlX ° from a bumble-bee. And what, still, 



