no 
THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 
Age after age ; and with filtration fine 
Dispart from earths, and sulphurs, and saline. 
Hence with diffusive salt old ocean steeps 
His emerald shallows, and his sapphire deeps. 
In every department of nature there is to be found this self-ad- 
justing principle — this beautiful and exquisite system of compen- 
sation, by which the operations of the grand machinery of the uni- 
verse are maintained in the most perfect order. 
344. Thus we behold sea-shells and animalculse in a new light. 
May we not now cease to regard them as beings which have little 
or nothing to do in maintaining the harmonies of creation 1 On 
the contrary, do we not see in them the principles of the most ad- 
mirable compensation in the system of oceanic circulation ? We 
may even regard them as regulators, to some extent, of climates 
in parts of the earth far removed from their presence. There is 
something suggestive, both of the grand and the beautiful, in the 
idea that, while the insects of the sea are building up their coral 
islands in the perpetual summer of the tropics, they are also en- 
gaged in dispensing warmth to distant parts of the earth, and in 
mitigating the severe cold of the Polar winter. 
Surely an hypothesis which, being followed out, suggests so 
much design, such perfect order and arrangement, and so many 
beauties for contemplation and admiration as does this, which, for 
the want of a better, I have ventured to offer with regard to the 
solid matter of the sea water, its salts and its shells — surely such 
an hypothesis, though it be not based entirely on the results of 
actual observation, can not be regarded as wholly vain or as al- 
together profitless. 
