ZOOPHYTA HELIANTHOIDA, 
203 
our northern shores, when they are big with numerous egg s. But 
in the Actiniae, ova in every state of developement may be seen 
in the same individual throughout the year ; perhaps, however, 
they are most abundantly laid in autumn. They are usually of 
a roundish figure, and, like the gemmules of polypes in general, 
contractile and motive, being carried about from the action of 
the cilia that clothe the surface. “ Under the microscope they 
prove of diversified form, many resembling flattened pease, some 
elongated or exhibiting irregular prominences, some almost 
spherical, others as if composed of two or even of three un- 
equal spheres, and some which cannot be referred to any par- 
ticular figure.” After moving about for several days, during 
which their forms suffer some slight change, they insensibly 
relax in their activity, the cilia disappear, and, having become 
stationary, each rapidly runs through the stages of develope- 
ment that lead it up to the similitude of its parent. 
Every one has read of the coral islands of tropical seas ; how 
they grow from the fathomless profound, and how they rise to 
day by the operations of puny insects, which, in countless num- 
bers, and in untold generations, effectuate changes on our globe 
superior, perhaps, to what all other animals united do, and com- 
pared to which the greatest achievements of “ intellectual man,” 
sink to insignificance.* Geology teaches us that with these 
worms the great work of creation began ; and from that uncer- 
* “ Their plants are made of stone, and they build dwellings. Dwellings ; — 
they construct islands and continents for the habitation of man. The labours 
of a worm, which man can barely see, form mountains like the Apennines, and 
regions to which Britain is as nothing. The invisible, insensible toil, of an ephe- 
meral point, conspiring with others in one great design, working unseen, un- 
heard, but for ever guided by one volition, by that One Volition which cannot 
err, converts the liquid water into the solid rock, the deep ocean into dry land, 
and extends the dominions of man, who sees it not and knows it not, over re- 
gions which even his ships had scarcely traversed. This is the Great Pacific 
Ocean ; destined, at some future day, to be a world. That same power which 
has thus wrought by means which blind man would have despised as inadequate, 
by means which he has but just discovered, here too shows the versatility, the 
contrast of its resources. In one hour it lets loose the raging engines, not of 
its wrath, but of its benevolence ; and the volcano and the earthquake lift up to 
the clouds, the prop and foundation of new worlds, that from those clouds they 
may draw down the sources of the river, the waters of fertility and plenty.” 
Dr Macculloch , Highlands and West. Islands, Vol. iv. p. 14. 
