Glaucus, or the Wonders of the Shore Part 3

"In tracts of fluent heat began, The seeming prey of cyclic storms, The home of seeming random forms, Till, at the last, arose the man."

And we know, also, that these forms, "seeming random" as they are, have appeared according to a law which, as far as we can judge, has been on the whole one of progress, - lower animals (though we cannot yet say, the lowest) appearing first, and man, the highest mammal, "the roof and crown of things," one of the latest in the series. We have no more right, let it be observed, to say that man, the highest, appeared last, than that the lowest appeared first. It was probably so, in both cases; but there is as yet no positive proof of either; and as we know that species of animals lower than those which already existed appeared again and again during the various eras, so it is quite possible that they may be appearing now, and may appear hereafter: and that for every extinct Dodo or Moa, a new species may be created, to keep up the equilibrium of the whole. This is but a surmise: but it may be wise, perhaps, just now, to confess boldly, even to insist on, its possibility, lest any should fancy, from our unwillingness to allow it, that there would be ought in it, if proved, contrary to sound religion.

I am, I must honestly confess, more and more unable to perceive anything which an orthodox Christian may not hold, in those physical theories of "evolution," which are gaining more and more the a.s.sent of our best zoologists and botanists. All that they ask us to believe is, that "species" and "families," and indeed the whole of organic nature, have gone through, and may still be going through, some such development from a lowest germ, as we know that every living individual, from the lowest zoophyte to man himself, does actually go through. They apply to the whole of the living world, past, present, and future, the law which is undeniably at work on each individual of it. They may be wrong, or they may be right: but what is there in such a conception contrary to any doctrine - at least of the Church of England? To say that this cannot be true; that species cannot vary, because G.o.d, at the beginning, created each thing "according to its kind," is really to beg the question; which is - Does the idea of "kind" include variability or not? and if so, how much variability? Now, "kind,"

or "species," as we call it, is defined nowhere in the Bible. What right have we to read our own definition into the word? - and that against the certain fact, that some "kinds" do vary, and that widely, - mankind, for instance, and the animals and plants which he domesticates. Surely that latter fact should be significant, to those who believe, as I do, that man was created in the likeness of G.o.d. For if man has the power, not only of making plants and animals vary, but of developing them into forms of higher beauty and usefulness than their wild ancestors possessed, why should not the G.o.d in whose image he is made possess the same power? If the old theological rule be true - "There is nothing in man which was not first in G.o.d" (sin, of course, excluded) - then why should not this imperfect creative faculty in man be the very guarantee that G.o.d possesses it in perfection?

Such at least is the conclusion of one who, studying certain families of plants, which indulge in the most fantastic varieties of shape and size, and yet through all their vagaries retain - as do the Palms, the Orchids, the Euphorbiaceae - one organ, or form of organs, peculiar and highly specialized, yet constant throughout the whole of each family, has been driven to the belief that each of these three families, at least, has "sported off" from one common ancestor - one archetypal Palm, one archetypal Orchid, one archetypal Euphorbia, simple, it may be, in itself, but endowed with infinite possibilities of new and complex beauty, to be developed, not in it, but in its descendants. He has asked himself, sitting alone amid the boundless wealth of tropic forests, whether even then and there the great G.o.d might not be creating round him, slowly but surely, new forms of beauty? If he chose to do it, could He not do it? That man found himself none the worse Christian for the thought. He has said - and must be allowed to say again, for he sees no reason to alter his words - in speaking of the wonderful variety of forms in the Euphorbiaceae, from the weedy English Euphorbias, the Dog's Mercuries, and the Box, to the p.r.i.c.kly-stemmed Scarlet Euphorbia of Madagascar, the succulent Cactus-like Euphorbias of the Canaries and elsewhere; the Gale-like Phyllanthus; the many-formed Crotons; the Hemp-like Maniocs, Physic-nuts, Castor-oils, the scarlet Poinsettia, the little pink and yellow Dalechampia, the poisonous Manchineel, and the gigantic Hura, or sandbox tree, of the West Indies, - all so different in shape and size, yet all alike in their most peculiar and complex fructification, and in their acrid milky juice,- "What if all these forms are the descendants of one original form? Would that be one whit the more wonderful than the theory that they were, each and all, with the minute, and often imaginary, shades of difference between certain cognate species among them, created separately and at once? But if it be so - which I cannot allow - what would the theologian have to say, save that G.o.d's works are even more wonderful than he always believed them to be? As for the theory being impossible - that is to be decided by men of science, on strict experimental grounds. As for us theologians, who are we, that we should limit, a priori, the power of G.o.d? 'Is anything too hard for the Lord?' asked the prophet of old; and we have a right to ask it as long as the world shall last. If it be said that 'natural selection,' or, as Mr. Herbert Spencer better defines it, the 'survival of the fittest,' is too simple a cause to produce such fantastic variety - that, again, is a question to be settled exclusively by men of science, on their own grounds. We, meanwhile, always knew that G.o.d works by very simple, or seemingly simple, means; that the universe, as far as we could discern it, was one organization of the most simple means. It was wonderful - or should have been - in our eyes, that a shower of rain should make the gra.s.s grow, and that the gra.s.s should become flesh, and the flesh food for the thinking brain of man. It was - or ought to have been - more wonderful yet to us that a child should resemble its parents, or even a b.u.t.terfly resemble, if not always, still usually, its parents likewise. Ought G.o.d to appear less or more august in our eyes if we discover that the means are even simpler than we supposed? We held Him to be Almighty and All-wise. Are we to reverence Him less or more if we find Him to be so much mightier, so much wiser, than we dreamed, that He can not only make all things, but - the very perfection of creative power - MAKE ALL THINGS MAKE THEMSELVES? We believed that His care was over all His works; that His providence worked perpetually over the universe.

We were taught - some of us at least - by Holy Scripture, that without Him not a sparrow fell to the ground, and that the very hairs of our head were all numbered; that the whole history of the universe was made up, in fact, of an infinite network of special providences. If, then, that should be true which a great naturalist writes, 'It may be metaphorically said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being, in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life,' - if this, I say, were proved to be true, ought G.o.d's care and G.o.d's providence to seem less or more magnificent in our eyes? Of old it was said by Him without whom nothing is made - 'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.' Shall we quarrel with physical science, if she gives us evidence that those words are true?"

And - understand it well - the grand pa.s.sage I have just quoted need not be accused of subst.i.tuting "natural selection for G.o.d."

In any case natural selection would be only the means or law by which G.o.d works, as He does by other natural laws. We do not subst.i.tute gravitation for G.o.d, when we say that the planets are sustained in their orbits by the law of gravitation. The theory about natural selection may be untrue, or imperfect, as may the modern theories of the "evolution and progress" of organic forms: let the man of science decide that. But if true, the theories seem to me perfectly to agree with, and may be perfectly explained by, the simple old belief which the Bible sets before us, of a LIVING G.o.d: not a mere past will, such as the Koran sets forth, creating once and for all, and then leaving the universe, to use Goethe's simile, "to spin round his finger;" nor again, an "all-pervading spirit," words which are mere contradictory jargon, concealing, from those who utter them, blank Materialism: but One who works in all things which have obeyed Him to will and to do of His good pleasure, keeping His abysmal and self-perfect purpose, yet altering the methods by which that purpose is attained, from aeon to aeon, ay, from moment to moment, for ever various, yet for ever the same. This great and yet most blessed paradox of the Changeless G.o.d, who yet can say "It repenteth me," and "Behold, I work a new thing on the earth," is revealed no less by nature than by Scripture; the changeableness, not of caprice or imperfection, but of an Infinite Maker and "Poietes," drawing ever fresh forms out of the inexhaustible treasury of His primaeval Mind; and yet never throwing away a conception to which He has once given actual birth in time and s.p.a.ce, (but to compare reverently small things and great) lovingly repeating it, re-applying it; producing the same effects by endlessly different methods; or so delicately modifying the method that, as by the turn of a hair, it shall produce endlessly diverse effects; looking back, as it were, ever and anon over the great work of all the ages, to retouch it, and fill up each chasm in the scheme, which for some good purpose had been left open in earlier worlds; or leaving some open (the forms, for instance, necessary to connect the bimana and the quadrumana) to be filled up perhaps hereafter when the world needs them; the handiwork, in short, of a living and loving Mind, perfect in His own eternity, but stooping to work in time and s.p.a.ce, and there rejoicing Himself in the work of His own hands, and in His eternal Sabbaths ceasing in rest ineffable, that He may look on that which He hath made, and behold it is very good.

I speak, of course, under correction; for this conclusion is emphatically matter of induction, and must be verified or modified by ever-fresh facts: but I meet with many a Christian pa.s.sage in scientific books, which seems to me to go, not too far, but rather not far enough, in a.s.serting the G.o.d of the Bible, as Saint Paul says, "not to have left Himself without witness," in nature itself, that He is the G.o.d of grace. Why speak of the G.o.d of nature and the G.o.d of grace as two ant.i.thetical terms? The Bible never, in a single instance, makes the distinction; and surely, if G.o.d be (as He is) the Eternal and Unchangeable One, and if (as we all confess) the universe bears the impress of His signet, we have no right, in the present infantile state of science, to put arbitrary limits of our own to the revelation which He may have thought good to make of Himself in nature. Nay, rather, let us believe that, if our eyes were opened, we should fulfil the requirement of Genius, to "see the universal in the particular," by seeing G.o.d's whole likeness, His whole glory, reflected as in a mirror even in the meanest flower; and that nothing but the dulness of our own souls prevents them from seeing day and night in all things, however small or trivial to human eclecticism, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself fulfilling His own saying, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."

To me it seems (to sum up, in a few words, what I have tried to say) that such development and progress as have as yet been actually discovered in nature, bear every trace of having been produced by successive acts of thought and will in some personal mind; which, however boundlessly rich and powerful, is still the Archetype of the human mind; and therefore (for to this I confess I have been all along tending) probably capable, without violence to its properties, of becoming, like the human mind, incarnate.

But to descend from these perhaps too daring speculations, there is another, and more human, source of interest about the animal who is writhing feebly in the gla.s.s jar of salt water; for he is one of the many curiosities which have been added to our fauna by that humble hero Mr. Charles Peach, the self-taught naturalist, of whom, as we walk on toward the rocks, something should be said, or rather read; for Mr. Chambers, in an often-quoted pa.s.sage from his Edinburgh Journal, which I must have the pleasure of quoting once again, has told the story better than we can tell it:-

"But who is that little intelligent-looking man in a faded naval uniform, who is so invariably to be seen in a particular central seat in this section? That, gentle reader, is perhaps one of the most interesting men who attend the British a.s.sociation. He is only a private in the mounted guard (preventive service) at an obscure part of the Cornwall coast, with four s.h.i.+llings a day, and a wife and nine children, most of whose education he has himself to conduct. He never tastes the luxuries which are so common in the middle ranks of life, and even amongst a large portion of the working cla.s.ses. He has to mend with his own hands every sort of thing that can break or wear in his house. Yet Mr. Peach is a votary of Natural History; not a student of the science in books, for he cannot afford books; but an investigator by sea and sh.o.r.e, a collector of Zoophytes and Echinodermata - strange creatures, many of which are as yet hardly known to man. These he collects, preserves, and describes; and every year does he come up to the British a.s.sociation with a few novelties of this kind, accompanied by ill.u.s.trative papers and drawings: thus, under circ.u.mstances the very opposite of those of such men as Lord Enniskillen, adding, in like manner, to the general stock of knowledge. On the present occasion he is unusually elated, for he has made the discovery of a Holothuria with twenty tentacula, a species of the Echinodermata which Professor Forbes, in his book on Star-Fishes, has said was never yet observed in the British seas. It may be of small moment to you, who, mayhap, know nothing of Holothurias: but it is a considerable thing to the Fauna of Britain, and a vast matter to a poor private of the Cornwall mounted guard. And accordingly he will go home in a few days, full of the glory of his exhibition, and strong anew by the kind notice taken of him by the masters of the science, to similar inquiries, difficult as it may be to prosecute them, under such a complication of duties, professional and domestic. Honest Peach! humble as is thy home, and simple thy bearing, thou art an honour even to this a.s.semblage of n.o.bles and doctors: nay, more, when we consider everything, thou art an honour to human nature itself; for where is the heroism like that of virtuous, intelligent, independent poverty? And such heroism is thine!" - CHAMBERS' EDIN. JOURN., Nov. 23, 1844.

Mr. Peach has been since rewarded in part for his long labours in the cause of science, by having been removed to a more lucrative post on the north coast of Scotland; the earnest, it is to be hoped, of still further promotion.

I mentioned just now Synapta; or, as Montagu called it, Chirodota: a much better name, and, I think, very uselessly changed; for Chirodota expresses the peculiarity of the beast, which consists in - start not, reader - twelve hands, like human hands, while Synapta expresses merely its power of clinging to the fingers, which it possesses in common with many other animals. It is, at least, a beast worth talking about; as for finding one, I fear that we have no chance of such good fortune.

Colonel Montagu found them here some forty years ago; and after him, Mr. Alder, in 1845. I found hundreds of them, but only once, in 1854 after a heavy south-eastern gale, washed up among the great Lutrariae in a cove near Goodrington; but all my dredging outside failed to procure a specimen - Mr. Alder, however, and Mr. c.o.c.ks (who find everything, and will at last certainly catch Midgard, the great sea-serpent, as Thor did, by baiting for him with a bull's head), have dredged them in great numbers; the former, at Helford in Cornwall, the latter on the west coast of Scotland. It seems, however, to be a southern monster, probably a remnant, like the great c.o.c.kle, of the Mediterranean fauna; for Mr. MacAndrew finds them plentifully in Vigo Bay, and J. Muller in the Adriatic, off Trieste.

But what is it like? Conceive a very fat short earth-worm; not ringed, though, like the earth-worm, but smooth and glossy, dappled with darker spots, especially on one side, which may be the upper one. Put round its mouth twelve little arms, on each a hand with four ragged fingers, and on the back of the hand a stump of a thumb, and you have Synapta Digitata (Plates IV. and V., from my drawings of the live animal). These hands it puts down to its mouth, generally in alternate pairs, but how it obtains its food by them is yet a mystery, for its intestines are filled, like an earth-worm's, with the mud in which it lives, and from which it probably extracts (as does the earth-worm) all organic matters.

You will find it stick to your fingers by the whole skin, causing, if your hand be delicate, a tingling sensation; and if you examine the skin under the microscope, you will find the cause. The whole skin is studded with minute gla.s.s anchors, some hanging freely from the surface, but most imbedded in the skin. Each of these anchors is jointed at its root into one end of a curious cribriform plate, - in plain English, one pierced like a sieve, which lies under the skin, and reminds one of the similar plates in the skin of the White Cuc.u.maria, which I will show you presently; and both of these we must regard as the first rudiments of an Echinoderm's outside skeleton, such as in the Sea-urchins covers the whole body of the animal. (See on Echinus Millaris, p. 89.) (7) Somewhat similar anchor-plates, from a Red Sea species, Synapta Vittata, may be seen in any collection of microscopic objects.

The animal, when caught, has a strange habit of self-destruction, contracting its skin at two or three different points, and writhing till it snaps itself into "junks," as the sailors would say, and then dies. My specimens, on breaking up, threw out from the wounded part long "ovarian filaments" (whatsoever those may be), similar to those thrown out by many of the Sagartian anemones, especially S. parasitica. Beyond this, I can tell you nothing about Synapta, and only ask you to consider its hands, as an instance of that fantastic play of Nature which repeats, in families widely different, organs of similar form, though perhaps of by no means similar use; nay, sometimes (as in those beautiful clear-wing hawk-moths which you, as they hover round the rhododendrons, mistake for b.u.mble-bees) repeats the outward form of a whole animal, for no conceivable reason save her - shall we not say honestly His? - own good pleasure.

But here we are at the old bank of boulders, the ruins of an antique pier which the monks of Tor Abbey built for their convenience, while Torquay was but a knot of fis.h.i.+ng huts within a lonely limestone cove. To get to it, though, we have pa.s.sed many a hidden treasure; for every ledge of these flat New-red-sandstone rocks, if torn up with the crowbar, discloses in its cracks and crannies nests of strange forms which shun the light of day; beautiful Actiniae fill the tiny caverns with living flowers; great Pholades (Plate X. figs. 3, 4) bore by hundreds in the softer strata; and wherever a thin layer of muddy sand intervenes between two slabs, long Annelid worms of quaintest forms and colours have their horizontal burrows, among those of that curious and rare radiate animal, the Spoonworm, (8) an eyeless bag about an inch long, half bluish grey, half pink, with a strange scalloped and wrinkled proboscis of saffron colour, which serves, in some mysterious way, soft as it is, to collect food, and clear its dark pa.s.sage through the rock.

See, at the extreme low-water mark, where the broad olive fronds of the Laminariae, like fan-palms, droop and wave gracefully in the retiring ripples, a great boulder which will serve our purpose.

Its upper side is a whole forest of sea-weeds, large and small; and that forest, if you examined it closely, as full of inhabitants as those of the Amazon or the Gambia. To "beat" that dense cover would be an endless task: but on the under side, where no sea- weeds grow, we shall find full in view enough to occupy us till the tide returns. For the slab, see, is such a one as sea-beasts love to haunt. Its weed-covered surface shows that the surge has not s.h.i.+fted it for years past. It lies on other boulders clear of sand and mud, so that there is no fear of dead sea-weed having lodged and decayed under it, destructive to animal life. We can see dark crannies and caves beneath; yet too narrow to allow the surge to wash in, and keep the surface clean. It will be a fine menagerie of Nereus, if we can but turn it.

Now the crowbar is well under it; heave, and with a will; and so, after five minutes' tugging, propping, slipping, and splas.h.i.+ng, the boulder gradually tips over, and we rush greedily upon the spoil.

A muddy dripping surface it is, truly, full of cracks and hollows, uninviting enough at first sight: let us look it round leisurely, to see if there are not materials enough there for an hour's lecture.

The first object which strikes the eye is probably a group of milk- white slugs, from two to six inches long, cuddling snugly together (Plate IX. fig. 1). You try to pull them off, and find that they give you some trouble, such a firm hold have the delicate white sucking arms, which fringe each of their five edges. You see at the head nothing but a yellow dimple; for eating and breathing are suspended till the return of tide; but once settled in a jar of salt-water, each will protrude a large chocolate-coloured head, tipped with a ring of ten feathery gills, looking very much like a head of "curled kale," but of the loveliest white and primrose; in the centre whereof lies perdu a mouth with st.u.r.dy teeth - if indeed they, as well as the whole inside of the beast, have not been lately got rid of, and what you see be not a mere bag, without intestine or other organ: but only for the time being. For hear it, worn-out epicures, and old Indians who bemoan your livers, this little Holothuria knows a secret which, if he could tell it, you would be glad to buy of him for thousands sterling. To him blue pill and muriatic acid are superfluous, and travels to German Brunnen a waste of time. Happy Holothuria! who possesses really the secret of everlasting youth, which ancient fable bestowed on the serpent and the eagle. For when his teeth ache, or his digestive organs trouble him, all he has to do is just to cast up forthwith his entire inside, and, faisant maigre for a month or so, grow a fresh set, and then eat away as merrily as ever. His name, if you wish to consult so triumphant a hygeist, is Cuc.u.maria Pentactes: but he has many a stout cousin round the Scotch coast, who knows the antibilious panacea as well as he, and submits, among the northern fishermen, to the rather rude and undeserved name of sea-puddings; one of which grows in Shetland to the enormous length of three feet, rivalling there his huge congeners, who display their exquisite plumes on every tropic coral reef. (9)

Next, what are those bright little buds, like salmon-coloured Banksia roses half expanded, sitting closely on the stone? Touch them; the soft part is retracted, and the orange flower of flesh is transformed into a pale pink flower of stone. That is the Madrepore, Caryophyllia Smithii (Plate V. fig. 2); one of our south coast rarities: and see, on the lip of the last one, which we have carefully scooped off with the chisel, two little pink towers of stone, delicately striated; drop them into this small bottle of sea-water, and from the top of each tower issues every half-second - what shall we call it? - a hand or a net of finest hairs, clutching at something invisible to our grosser sense. That is the Pyrgoma, parasitic only (as far as we know) on the lip of this same rare Madrepore; a little "cirrhipod," the cousin of those tiny barnacles which roughen every rock (a larger sort whereof I showed you on the Turritella), and of those larger ones also who burrow in the thick hide of the whale, and, borne about upon his mighty sides, throw out their tiny casting nets, as this Pyrgoma does, to catch every pa.s.sing animalcule, and sweep them into the jaws concealed within its sh.e.l.l. And this creature, rooted to one spot through life and death, was in its infancy a free swimming animal, hovering from place to place upon delicate ciliae, till, having sown its wild oats, it settled down in life, built itself a good stone house, and became a landowner, or rather a glebae adscriptus, for ever and a day. Mysterious destiny! - yet not so mysterious as that of the free medusoid young of every polype and coral, which ends as a rooted tree of horn or stone, and seems to the eye of sensuous fancy to have literally degenerated into a vegetable. Of them you must read for yourself in Mr. Gosse's book; in the meanwhile he shall tell you something of the beautiful Madrepores themselves. His description, (10) by far the best yet published, should be read in full; we must content ourselves with extracts.

"Doubtless you are familiar with the stony skeleton of our Madrepore, as it appears in museums. It consists of a number of thin calcareous plates standing up edgewise, and arranged in a radiating manner round a low centre. A little below the margin their individuality is lost in the deposition of rough calcareous matter. . . . The general form is more or less cylindrical, commonly wider at top than just above the bottom. . . . This is but the skeleton; and though it is a very pretty object, those who are acquainted with it alone, can form but a very poor idea of the beauty of the living animal. . . . Let it, after being torn from the rock, recover its equanimity; then you will see a pellucid gelatinous flesh emerging from between the plates, and little exquisitely formed and coloured tentacula, with white clubbed tips fringing the sides of the cup-shaped cavity in the centre, across which stretches the oval disc marked with a star of some rich and brilliant colour, surrounding the central mouth, a slit with white crenated lips, like the orifice of one of those elegant cowry sh.e.l.ls which we put upon our mantelpieces. The mouth is always more or less prominent, and can be protruded and expanded to an astonis.h.i.+ng extent. The s.p.a.ce surrounding the lips is commonly fawn colour, or rich chestnut-brown; the star or vand.y.k.ed circle rich red, pale vermilion, and sometimes the most brilliant emerald green, as brilliant as the gorget of a humming-bird."

And what does this exquisitely delicate creature do with its pretty mouth? Alas for fact! It sips no honey-dew, or fruits from paradise. - "I put a minute spider, as large as a pin's head, into the water, pus.h.i.+ng it down to the coral. The instant it touched the tip of a tentacle, it adhered, and was drawn in with the surrounding tentacles between the plates. With a lens I saw the small mouth slowly open, and move over to that side, the lips gaping unsymmetrically; while with a movement as imperceptible as that of the hour hand of a watch, the tiny prey was carried along between the plates to the corner of the mouth. The mouth, however, moved most, and at length reached the edges of the plates, gradually closed upon the insect, and then returned to its usual place in the centre."

Mr. Gosse next tried the fairy of the walking mouth with a house- fly, who escaped only by hard fighting; and at last the gentle creature, after swallowing and disgorging various large pieces of sh.e.l.l-fish, found viands to its taste in "the lean of cooked meat and portions of earthworms," filling up the intervals by a perpetual dessert of microscopic animalcules, whirled into that lovely avernus, its mouth, by the currents of the delicate ciliae which clothe every tentacle. The fact is, that the Madrepore, like those glorious sea-anemones whose living flowers stud every pool, is by profession a scavenger and a feeder on carrion; and being as useful as he is beautiful, really comes under the rule which he seems at first to break, that handsome is who handsome does.

Another species of Madrepore (11) was discovered on our Devon coast by Mr. Gosse, more gaudy, though not so delicate in hue as our Caryophyllia. Mr. Gosse's locality, for this and numberless other curiosities, is Ilfracombe, on the north coast of Devon. My specimens came from Lundy Island, in the mouth of the Bristol Channel, or more properly from that curious "Rat Island" to the south of it, where still lingers the black long-tailed English rat, exterminated everywhere else by his st.u.r.dier brown cousin of the Hanoverian dynasty.

Look, now, at these tiny saucers of the thinnest ivory, the largest not bigger than a silver threepence, which contain in their centres a milk-white crust of stone, pierced, as you see under the magnifier, into a thousand cells, each with its living architect within. Here are two kinds: in one the tubular cells radiate from the centre, giving it the appearance of a tiny compound flower, daisy or groundsel; in the other they are crossed with waving grooves, giving the whole a peculiar fretted look, even more beautiful than that of the former species. They are Tubulipora patina and Tubulipora hispida; - and stay - break off that tiny rough red wart, and look at its cells also under the magnifier: it is Cellepora pumicosa; and now, with the Madrepore, you hold in your hand the princ.i.p.al, at least the commonest, British types of those famed coral insects, which in the tropics are the architects of continents, and the conquerors of the ocean surge. All the world, since the publication of Darwin's delightful "Voyage of the Beagle,"' and of Williams' "Missionary Enterprises," knows, or ought to know, enough about them: for those who do not, there are a few pages in the beginning of Dr. Landsborough's "British Zoophytes," well worth perusal.

There are a few other true cellepore corals round the coast. The largest of all, Cervicornis, may be dredged a few miles outside on the Exmouth bank, with a few more Tubulipores: but all tiny things, the lingering and, as it were, expiring remnants of that great coral-world which, through the abysmal depths of past ages, formed here in Britain our limestone hills, storing up for generations yet unborn the materials of agriculture and architecture. Inexpressibly interesting, even solemn, to those who will think, is the sight of those puny parasites which, as it were, connect the ages and the aeons: yet not so solemn and full of meaning as that tiny relic of an older world, the little pear- shaped Turbinolia (cousin of the Madrepores and Sea-anemones), found fossil in the Suffolk Crag, and yet still lingering here and there alive in the deep water of Scilly and the west coast of Ireland, possessor of a pedigree which dates, perhaps, from ages before the day in which it was said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." To think that the whole human race, its joys and its sorrows, its virtues and its sins, its aspirations and its failures, has been rus.h.i.+ng out of eternity and into eternity again, as Arjoon in the Bhagavad Gita beheld the race of men issuing from Kreeshna's flaming mouth, and swallowed up in it again, "as the crowds of insects swarm into the flame, as the homeless streams leap down into the ocean bed," in an everlasting heart-pulse whose blood is living souls - and all that while, and ages before that mystery began, that humble coral, unnoticed on the dark sea-floor, has been "continuing as it was at the beginning," and fulfilling "the law which cannot be broken," while races and dynasties and generations have been

"Playing such fantastic tricks before high heaven, As make the angels weep."

Yes; it is this vision of the awful permanence and perfection of the natural world, beside the wild flux and confusion, the mad struggles, the despairing cries of the world of spirits which man has defiled by sin, which would at moments crush the naturalist's heart, and make his brain swim with terror, were it not that he can see by faith, through all the abysses and the ages, not merely

" Hands, From out the darkness, shaping man;"

but above them a living loving countenance, human and yet Divine; and can hear a voice which said at first, "Let us make man in our image;" and hath said since then, and says for ever and for ever, "Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world."

But now, friend, who listenest, perhaps instructed, and at least amused - if, as Professor Harvey well says, the simpler animals represent, as in a gla.s.s, the scattered organs of the higher races, which of your organs is represented by that "sca'd man's head,"

which the Devon children more gracefully, yet with less adherence to plain likeness, call "mermaid's head," (12) which we picked up just now on Paignton Sands? Or which, again, by its more beautiful little congener, (13) five or six of which are adhering tightly to the slab before us, a ball covered with delicate spines of lilac and green, and stuck over (cunning fellows!) with stripes of dead sea-weed to serve as improvised parasols? One cannot say that in him we have the first type of the human skull: for the resemblance, quaint as it is, is only sensuous and accidental, (in the logical use of that term,) and not h.o.m.ological, I.E. a lower manifestation of the same idea. Yet how is one tempted to say, that this was Nature's first and lowest attempt at that use of hollow globes of mineral for protecting soft fleshy parts, which she afterwards developed to such perfection in the skulls of vertebrate animals! But even that conceit, pretty as it sounds, will not hold good; for though Radiates similar to these were among the earliest tenants of the abyss, yet as early as their time, perhaps even before them, had been conceived and actualized, in the sharks, and in Mr. Hugh Miller's pets the old red sandstone fishes, that very true vertebrate skull and brain, of which this is a mere mockery. (14) Here the whole animal, with his extraordinary feeding mill, (for neither teeth nor jaws is a fit word for it,) is enclosed within an ever-growing limestone castle, to the architecture of which the Eddystone and the Crystal Palace are bungling heaps; without arms or legs, eyes or ears, and yet capable, in spite of his perpetual imprisonment, of walking, feeding, and breeding, doubt it not, merrily enough. But this result has been attained at the expense of a complication of structure, which has baffled all human a.n.a.lysis and research into final causes. As much concerning this most miraculous of families as is needful to be known, and ten times more than you are likely to understand, may be read in Harvey's "Sea-Side Book," pp. 142- 148, - pages from which you will probably arise with a sense of the infinity and complexity of Nature, even in what we are pleased to call her "lower" forms, and the simplest and, as it were, easiest forms of life. Conceive a Crystal Palace, (for mere difference in size, as both the naturalist and the metaphysician know, has nothing to do with the wonder,) whereof each separate joist, girder, and pane grows continually without altering the shape of the whole; and you have conceived only one of the miracles embodied in that little sea-egg, which the Creator has, as it were, to justify to man His own immutability, furnished with a sh.e.l.l capable of enduring fossil for countless ages, that we may confess Him to have been as great when first His Spirit brooded on the deep, as He is now and will be through all worlds to come.

But we must make haste; for the tide is rising fast, and our stone will be restored to its eleven hours' bath, long before we have talked over half the wonders which it holds. Look though, ere you retreat, at one or two more.

What is that little brown thing whom you have just taken off the rock to which it adhered so stoutly by his sucking-foot? A limpet?

Not at all: he is of quite a different family and structure; but, on the whole, a limpet-like sh.e.l.l would suit him well enough, so he had one given him: nevertheless, owing to certain anatomical peculiarities, he needed one aperture more than a limpet; so one, if you will examine, has been given him at the top of his sh.e.l.l.

(15) This is one instance among a thousand of the way in which a scientific knowledge of objects must not obey, but run counter to, the impressions of sense; and of a custom in nature which makes this caution so necessary, namely, the repet.i.tion of the same form, slightly modified, in totally different animals, sometimes as if to avoid waste, (for why should not the same conception be used in two different cases, if it will suit in both?) and sometimes (more marvellous by far) when an organ, fully developed and useful in one species, appears in a cognate species but feeble, useless, and, as it were, abortive; and gradually, in species still farther removed, dies out altogether; placed there, it would seem, at first sight, merely to keep up the family likeness. I am half jesting; that cannot be the only reason, perhaps not the reason at all; but the fact is one of the most curious, and notorious also, in comparative anatomy.

Look, again, at those sea-slugs. One, some three inches long, of a bright lemon-yellow, clouded with purple; another of a dingy grey; (16) another exquisite little creature of a pearly French White, (17) furred all over the back with what seem arms, but are really gills, of ringed white and grey and black. Put that yellow one into water, and from his head, above the eyes, arise two serrated horns, while from the after-part of his back springs a circular Prince-of-Wales's-feather of gills, - they are almost exactly like those which we saw just now in the white Cuc.u.maria. Yes; here is another instance of the same custom of repet.i.tion. The Cuc.u.maria is a low radiate animal - the sea-slug a far higher mollusc; and every organ within him is formed on a different type; as indeed are those seemingly identical gills, if you come to examine them under the microscope, having to oxygenate fluids of a very different and more complicated kind; and, moreover, the Cuc.u.maria's gills were put round his mouth, the Doris's feathers round the other extremity; that grey Eolis's, again, are simple clubs, scattered over his whole back, and in each of his nudibranch congeners these same gills take some new and fantastic form; in Melibaea those clubs are covered with warts; in Scyllaea, with tufted bouquets; in the beautiful Antiopa they are transparent bags; and in many other English species they take every conceivable form of leaf, tree, flower, and branch, bedecked with every colour of the rainbow, as you may see them depicted in Messrs. Alder and Hanc.o.c.k's unrivalled Monograph on the Nudibranch Mollusca.

And now, wors.h.i.+pper of final causes and the mere useful in nature, answer but one question, - Why this prodigal variety? All these Nudibranchs live in much the same way: why would not the same mould have done for them all? And why, again, (for we must push the argument a little further,) why have not all the b.u.t.terflies, at least all who feed on the same plant, the same markings? Of all unfathomable triumphs of design, (we can only express ourselves thus, for honest induction, as Paley so well teaches, allows us to ascribe such results only to the design of some personal will and mind,) what surpa.s.ses that by which the scales on a b.u.t.terfly's wing are arranged to produce a certain pattern of artistic beauty beyond all painter's skill? What a waste of power, on any utilitarian theory of nature! And once more, why are those strange microscopic atomies, the Diatomaceae and Infusoria, which fill every stagnant pool; which fringe every branch of sea-weed; which form banks hundreds of miles long on the Arctic sea-floor, and the strata of whole moorlands; which pervade in millions the ma.s.s of every iceberg, and float aloft in countless swarms amid the clouds of the volcanic dust; - why are their tiny sh.e.l.ls of flint as fantastically various in their quaint mathematical symmetry, as they are countless beyond the wildest dreams of the Poet? Mystery inexplicable on the conceited notion which, making man forsooth the centre of the universe, dares to believe that this variety of forms has existed for countless ages in abysmal sea-depths and untrodden forests, only that some few individuals of the Western races might, in these latter days, at last discover and admire a corner here and there of the boundless realms of beauty. Inexplicable, truly, if man be the centre and the object of their existence; explicable enough to him who believes that G.o.d has created all things for Himself, and rejoices in His own handiwork, and that the material universe is, as the wise man says, "A platform whereon His Eternal Spirit sports and makes melody." Of all the blessings which the study of nature brings to the patient observer, let none, perhaps, be cla.s.sed higher than this: that the further he enters into those fairy gardens of life and birth, which Spenser saw and described in his great poem, the more he learns the awful and yet most comfortable truth, that they do not belong to him, but to One greater, wiser, lovelier than he; and as he stands, silent with awe, amid the pomp of Nature's ever-busy rest, hears, as of old, "The Word of the Lord G.o.d walking among the trees of the garden in the cool of the day."

One sight more, and we have done. I had something to say, had time permitted, on the ludicrous element which appears here and there in nature. There are animals, like monkeys and crabs, which seem made to be laughed at; by those at least who possess that most indefinable of faculties, the sense of the ridiculous. As long as man possesses muscles especially formed to enable him to laugh, we have no right to suppose (with some) that laughter is an accident of our fallen nature; or to find (with others) the primary cause of the ridiculous in the perception of unfitness or disharmony. And yet we shrink (whether rightly or wrongly, we can hardly tell) from attributing a sense of the ludicrous to the Creator of these forms.

It may be a weakness on my part; at least I will hope it is a reverent one: but till we can find something corresponding to what we conceive of the Divine Mind in any cla.s.s of phenomena, it is perhaps better not to talk about them at all, but observe a stoic "epoche," waiting for more light, and yet confessing that our own laughter is uncontrollable, and therefore we hope not unworthy of us, at many a strange creature and strange doing which we meet, from the highest ape to the lowest polype.

But, in the meanwhile, there are animals in which results so strange, fantastic, even seemingly horrible, are produced, that fallen man may be pardoned, if he shrinks from them in disgust.

That, at least, must be a consequence of our own wrong state; for everything is beautiful and perfect in its place. It may be answered, "Yes, in its place; but its place is not yours. You had no business to look at it, and must pay the penalty for intermeddling." I doubt that answer; for surely, if man have liberty to do anything, he has liberty to search out freely his heavenly Father's works; and yet every one seems to have his antipathic animal; and I know one bred from his childhood to zoology by land and sea, and bold in a.s.serting, and honest in feeling, that all without exception is beautiful, who yet cannot, after handling and petting and admiring all day long every uncouth and venomous beast, avoid a paroxysm of horror at the sight of the common house-spider. At all events, whether we were intruding or not, in turning this stone, we must pay a fine for having done so; for there lies an animal as foul and monstrous to the eye as "hydra, gorgon, or chimaera dire," and yet so wondrously fitted to its work, that we must needs endure for our own instruction to handle and to look at it. Its name, if you wish for it, is Nemertes; probably N. Borlasii; (18) a worm of very "low"

organization, though well fitted enough for its own work. You see it? That black, s.h.i.+ny, knotted lump among the gravel, small enough to be taken up in a dessert spoon. Look now, as it is raised and its coils drawn out. Three feet - six - nine, at least: with a capability of seemingly endless expansion; a slimy tape of living caoutchouc, some eighth of an inch in diameter, a dark chocolate- black, with paler longitudinal lines. Is it alive? It hangs, helpless and motionless, a mere velvet string across the hand. Ask the neighbouring Annelids and the fry of the rock fishes, or put it into a vase at home, and see. It lies motionless, trailing itself among the gravel; you cannot tell where it begins or ends; it may be a dead strip of sea-weed, Himanthalia lorea, perhaps, or Chorda filum; or even a tarred string. So thinks the little fish who plays over and over it, till he touches at last what is too surely a head. In an instant a bell-shaped sucker mouth has fastened to his side. In another instant, from one lip, a concave double proboscis, just like a tapir's (another instance of the repet.i.tion of forms), has clasped him like a finger; and now begins the struggle: but in vain. He is being "played" with such a fis.h.i.+ng- line as the skill of a Wilson or a Stoddart never could invent; a living line, with elasticity beyond that of the most delicate fly- rod, which follows every lunge, shortening and lengthening, slipping and twining round every piece of gravel and stem of sea- weed, with a tiring drag such as no Highland wrist or step could ever bring to bear on salmon or on trout. The victim is tired now; and slowly, and yet dexterously, his blind a.s.sailant is feeling and s.h.i.+fting along his side, till he reaches one end of him; and then the black lips expand, and slowly and surely the curved finger begins packing him end-foremost down into the gullet, where he sinks, inch by inch, till the swelling which marks his place is lost among the coils, and he is probably macerated to a pulp long before he has reached the opposite extremity of his cave of doom.

Once safe down, the black murderer slowly contracts again into a knotted heap, and lies, like a boa with a stag inside him, motionless and blest. (19)

There; we must come away now, for the tide is over our ankles; but touch, before you go, one of those little red mouths which peep out of the stone. A tiny jet of water shoots up almost into your face.

The bivalve (20) who has burrowed into the limestone knot (the softest part of the stone to his jaws, though the hardest to your chisel) is scandalized at having the soft mouths of his siphons so rudely touched, and taking your finger for some bothering Annelid, who wants to nibble him, is defending himself; shooting you, as naturalists do humming-birds, with water. Let him rest in peace; it will cost you ten minutes' hard work, and much dirt, to extract him; but if you are fond of sh.e.l.ls, secure one or two of those beautiful pink and straw-coloured scallops (Hinnites pusio, Plate X. fig. 1), who have gradually incorporated the layers of their lower valve with the roughnesses of the stone, destroying thereby the beautiful form which belongs to their race, but not their delicate colour. There are a few more bivalves too, adhering to the stone, and those rare ones, and two or three delicate Mangeliae and Na.s.sae (21) are trailing their graceful spires up and down in search of food. That little bright red and yellow pea, too, touch it - the brilliant coloured cloak is withdrawn, and, instead, you have a beautiful ribbed pink cowry, (22) our only European representative of that grand tropical family. Cast one wondering glance, too, at the forest of zoophytes and corals, Lepraliae and Fl.u.s.trae, and those quaint blue stars, set in brown jelly, which are no zoophytes, but respectable molluscs, each with his well- formed mouth and intestines, (23) but combined in a peculiar form of Communism, of which all one can say is, that one hopes they like it; and that, at all events, they agree better than the heroes and heroines of Mr. Hawthorne's "Blithedale Romance."

Now away, and as a specimen of the fertility of the water-world, look at this rough list of species, (24) the greater part of which are on this very stone, and all of which you might obtain in an hour, would the rude tide wait for zoologists: and remember that the number of individuals of each species of polype must be counted by tens of thousands; and also, that, by searching the forest of sea-weeds which covers the upper surface, we should probably obtain some twenty minute species more.

A goodly catalogue this, surely, of the inhabitants of three or four large stones; and yet how small a specimen of the mult.i.tudinous nations of the sea!