634 THE WONDERS OF GEOLOGY. Lect VI. 



What arc the works of intellectual man, 



His temples, palaces, and sepulchres] 



Dust in the balance, atoms in the gale. 



Compared with these achievements in the deep, 



Were all the monuments of olden time ! 



Egypt's grey piles of hieroglyphic grandeur, 



That have survived the language which they speak, 



Preserving its dead emblems to the eye, 



Yet hiding from the mind what these reveal ; 



Her Pyramids would be mere pinnacles, 



Her giant statues, wrought from rocks of granite, 



But puny ornaments for such a pile, 



As this stupendous mound of catacombs, 



Fill'd with dry mummies of the builders, worms ! " 



32. Fossil Zoophytes. — The conditions under which 

 corals and other zoophytes are preserved in the mineral 

 kingdom, and the formation of conglomerates from the 

 debris of corals and shells, have been described in the pre- 

 vious lectures ; in this place I shall offer a cursory review 

 of the geological distribution of fossil zoophytes, without 

 entering upon details which will be found more or less fully 

 exemplified, in the account of the organic remains of the 

 respective systems of deposits. 



The coralline limestones now forming on the shores of the 

 Bermuda Islands (a?ite, p. 80), and conglomerates on those 

 of the Isle of Ascension (p. 90), prove that at the present 

 time accumulations of calcareous stone are going on, similar 

 in character to many of the fossiliferous deposits of the 

 Chalk, Oolite, and other ancient formations. Mr. Darwin 

 has observed a similar effect in the Pacific, where disin- 

 tegrated coral reefs give rise to vast deposits of calcareous 

 detritus, which, when dry, closely resembles soft chalk. In 

 the West Indies, blocks of silicified meandrinse, astraae, and 

 other reef-forming species, are abundantly distributed in the 

 superficial alluvium of Antigua and other islands. The 

 pliocene, or newer tertiary, of Palermo, abounds in corals of 

 species that still inhabit the Mediterranean. In the Crag. 



