Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/342

 338 important operations of nature are conducted by the; agency of atoms too minute to be either perceptible by the human eye, of comprehensible by the human understanding.

We cannot better conclude this brief outline of the history of fossil Polyparies, extending as they do, from the most early transition rocks to.the present seas, than in the words with which Mr. Ellis expresses the feelings excited in his own mind by his elaborate and beautiful investigations of the history of living Corallines.

"And now, should it be asked, granting all this to be true, to what end has so much labour been bestowed in the demonstration? I can only answer, that as to me these disquisitions have opened new scenes of wonder and astonishment, in contemplating how variously, how extensively, life is distributed through the universe of things, so it is possible, that the facts here related, and these instances of nature animated in a part hitherto unsuspected, may excite the like pleasing ideas in others; and, in minds more capacious and penetrating, lead to farther discoveries, farther proofs, (should such yet be wanting,) that One infinitely wise, good, all-powerful Being has made, and still upholds, the Whole of what is good and perfect; and hence we may learn, that, if creatures of so low an order in the great scale of Nature, are endued with faculties that enable them to fill up their sphere of action with such Propriety, we likewise, who are advanced so many gradations above them, owe to ourselves, and to Him who made us and all things, a constant application to acquire that degree of Rectitude and Perfection, to which we also are endued with faculties of attaining."—Ellis on Corallines, p. 103.

of the Valves of a marine Cypris (Cytherina) and sixteen species of Foraminifers.