the rarer forms which at long intervals are seen on the surface or in the 
shallows, but the whole wonders of which we can never know. 
In the lowest division of the animal kingdom we indeed see sufficient to 
he aware that forms of life may exist under very different conditions to 
those of the higher races, conditions (temperature excepted) altogether at 
issue with our usual experience; and descending one link lower in the 
chain of existences which connects the animal and vegetable worlds, we 
find the most discordant monsters that a troubled imagination ever con¬ 
ceived, actually in “esse,” as for instance, the corallines and sponges— 
difference of opinion exists-—but the balance of observed facts seem in 
favour of these forms being each one animal , with its million heads pro¬ 
truding from its calcareous or moss-like covering, with endless motion of 
cilia seeking its prey. 
In respect of the possibility of creatures of comparatively high organi¬ 
zation residing habitually at immense depths of the ocean, much specula¬ 
tion might be entered upon and much objection raised, and certainly the 
writer does not feel himself competent to deal dogmatically with either; 
but for an authority, in treating on these subjects, against scornful 
incredulity which, believing nothing, and inquiring into nothing, will 
discover nothing and settle nothing, we may well remember what the 
celebrated Agassiz said to that truly original inquirer into nature, the 
author of “ Walks in the Old Red Sandstone:” “Do not be deterred, if 
you have examined minutely, by any dread of being deemed extrava¬ 
gant, the possibilities of existence run so deeply into the extravagant, 
that there is scarcely any conception too extraordinary for nature to 
realize.” 
Incompatible as we may imagine at first thoughts, the continuance of 
organic life, endowed with the power of voluntary locomotion and the 
capability of receiving sensuous impressions, to be, at the bottom of the 
sea, with the conditions by which it must be there surrounded; we have 
seen sufficient in the structure of the animal forms of our upper world to 
know that, by means of those wonderful compensations so indicative of 
Creative Wisdom, the living creature can be adapted to its habitation, and 
can there fulfil the purposes for which it was made. 
Yielding for the moment to the promptings of the imagination, we may 
presume, in the language of science, that the submarine kingdom is one 
abounding in the lower forms of organization, and our inferences would 
add, of dimensions expanded beyond all previous conception. 
Deprived of the solar rays indeed, but irradiated by phosphoric bril¬ 
liance, and stimulated by warmth derived from the centre, here forests of 
