Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/339

 Rh appears to have prevailed from the first commencement of life in the most ancient seas, throughout that long series of ages whose duration is attested by the varied succession of animal and vegetable exuviæ, which are buried in the strata of the earth. In all these strata the calcareous habitations of such minute and apparently unimportant creatures as Polypes, have formed large and permanent additions to the solid materials of the globe, and afford a striking example of the influence of animal life upon the mineral condition of the earth.

If there be one thing more surprising than another in the investigation of natural phenomena, it is perhaps the infinite extent and vast importance of things apparently little and insignificant. When we descry an insect, smaller than a mite, moving with agility across the paper on which we write, we feel as incapable of forming any distinct conception of the minutiae of the muscular fibres, which effect these movements, and of the still smaller vessels by which they are nourished, as we are of fully apprehending the magnitude

fishes, and also small Crustacea, with which he fed several individuals at Torquay, seizing them with their tentacula, and digesting them within the central sac which forms their stomach.