ands, evidently of a comparatively recent formation, we find almost as many species of plants as there are in all Europe; more than in all Africa, and nearly as many as in all Asia. How strikingly do the celebrated lines of Gray recur to our imagination!

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its fragrance on the desert air.

Nor is the vast profusion of vegetable beings that receive life and sustenance in the torrid zone of America less extraordinary. We may extend our surprise, too, to the singular fact, that in Lapland there are so many species of rare plants, that when Linnæus visited that country he was struck with astonishment.

In Mexico there is a tree, the flower of which, before it has expanded, resembles the closed hand of a monkey; when unfolded, the open hand. From this circumstance it has derived its name of chiranthodeadron. Not long since there existed only one specimen of this tree in the known world. It grows, and has flourished for many ages, in Toluca, a city of Mexico, where it is esteemed sacred, and whither persons travel from great distances to procure its flowers. This tree has been fully described by Larretqui, a Mexican physician, whose work, written in Spanish, has been translated into French by M. Lescallier. Previous to the year 1787 this was the only tree of its genus known to be in existence; but some botanists having visited Toluca in that year, they took slips from it, and planted them in the royal garden in Mexico, where one of them took root, and had grown in 1804 to the height of fortyfive feet. Humboldt and his friend Bonpland visited the parent tree. They knew of no other besides except that in Mexico; though, from some indistinct accounts, they thought it probable it might exist in some of the distant provinces of that country.

CORALLINA.

THE greatness and wisdom of the universal Creator are as conspicuously observed in the smallest as in the most gigantic of his works. The CORALLINA, endowed, as some one has remarked, with sensation scarcely sufficient to distinguish them from plants, build up, from the bottom of unfathomable seas, solid structures that form innumerable shoals and islands in the vast Pacific.

These insects exhibit one of the greatest miracles in creation. They are among the feeblest and most imperfect of animated beings, and yet Nature avails herself of them to construct some of the most durable of her edifices. Of these creatures some resemble snails, and others are like small lobsters; while they are of various sizes and lengths, some being as fine as thread, and several feet long. But the most common are formed like stars, with arms from four to six inches in length, which they move about with great rapidity, as it is supposed, to catch their food. Some are sluggish, others exceedingly active; some are of a dark colour, others blue, and some of a bright yellow. Those of the Mediterranean are more frequently red, white, or vermilion. On the coast of Australasia,* where their numbers

* Captain Kotzebue, the Russian navigator, who visited these regions during his voyage of discovery (1815 and 1818), indulges in the following reflections upon these amazing works: "The spot on which I stood filled me with astonishment, and I adored in silent admiration the omnipotence of God, who had given even to these minute animals the power to construct such a work. My thoughts were confounded, when I considered the immense series of years that must elapse before such an island can rise from the fathomless abyss of the ocean and become visible on the surface. At a future period they will assume another shape; all the islands will join, and form a circular slip of earth, with a pond or lake in the middle; and this form will again change, as these animals continue building till they reach the surface, and then the water will one day vanish, and only

are prodigious, Captain Flinders saw them of all colours, glowing with vivid tints of every shade, and rivalling in beauty the most gorgeous flowergarden in Europe.

These insignificant insects nature has employed to form islands and to build submarine continents.

Omnipotence wrought in them, with them, by them.
Hence, what Omnipotence alone could do,

Worms did.

I saw the living pile ascend,
The mausoleum of its architects,

Still dying upward as their labours closed:
Slime the material; but the slime was turn'd
To adamant by their petrific touch.

Frail were their frames, ephemeral their lives,
Their masonry imperishable.-MONTGOMERY.

The substance of which the corallina forms its cell has not been ascertained, though possibly of its own calcareous secretions.

Coral

Coral ceases to grow when the worm that forms it is not exposed to the washing of the sea. rocks, therefore, never exceed the highest tide: when the tide subsides they appear firm and compact, exceedingly hard and rugged; but no sooner does the water return than these insects are observed peeping out of holes which were before invisible.* one great island be visible. It is a strange feeling to walk about on a living island, where all below is actively at work. And to what corner of the earth can we penetrate where human beings are not already to be found? In the remotest regions of the north, amid mountains of ice; under the burning sun of the equator; nay, even in the middle of the ocean, on islands which have been formed by animals, they are met with!"

* The coral islands of the Pacific rise from the 30th parallel of south latitude to the 30th of north latitude. "Of the rapidity with which the coral grows, we are not in possession of sufficient information on which to form a correct judgment. Osnaburg Island is supposed to have been only a reef of rocks when the Matilda was wrecked there in 1792: it is now an island fourteen miles in length, and covered on one side with tall trees, and the lagoon in the centre is dotted with columns. The coral, therefore, has probably made a rapid growth since 1792, though Captain Beech

The nature of corals and corallines was first discovered by Mr. Ellis. "Your discoveries," said Linnæus, in a letter from Upsal to that philosopher, I may be said to vie with those of Columbus: He found out America or a new India; you have laid open hitherto unknown Indies in the depths of the

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Coral reefs stretch along the whole western coasts of Guinea and Madagascar; the eastern coast of Abyssinia, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean; the coasts of China, Japan, and Corea, and the Straits of Sunda; also the entire eastern coast of Australasia; and are found in almost every part of the Pacific, covering not only detached parts, but extending several thousand square leagues.

On these reefs the high tides gradually deposite sand, shells, pumice, pebbles, mud, seaweed, small pieces of coral, wood, &c. Elevated to the surface, birds begin to settle on them and deposite their exuvia; saline plants take root upon them, and tropical trees, vegetables, and seeds are washed upon them. In this manner islands are formed and become enriched with soil, so that in a few years they are clothed with the prurient vegetation of tropical climates. Man then takes possession, and_nature has thus rewarded herself for her labours. But she

ey found two anchors of a ton weight each, and a kedge anchor, which he supposes belonged to the Matilda, upon the sunken reef of live coral, and around these anchors the coral had made no progress in growing, while some large shellfish, adhering to the same rock, were so overgrown with coral as to have only space enough left to open about an inch. It is probable, however, that the oxide proceeding from the anchors may have been prejudicial, as far as its effects extended, to the coral insect, and thus have prevented its growth. All navigators who have visited these seas state that no charts or maps are of any service after a few years, owing to the number of fresh rocks and reefs which are continually rising to the surface; and it is perfectly accordant with the instincts of animals to continue working without intermission until their labours are consummated or their lives are extinct."-Anon.

does not cease to extend her operations; her work of marine creation still goes on; and the time may one day come when the existence of the Pacific as an entire ocean will be esteemed as fabulous as the ancient Atlantis. Islands are increasing in number every year, in size every hour. They rise in archipelagoes, and archipelagoes, in future ages, may be

united into continents.

BEES.

PLINY was a lover of bees, and his Natural History contains all that the ancients knew of their economy. Before his time there were only two practical writers on this subject: Aristarchus of Soli, who occupied himself entirely with the care of them, and Philiscus of Thasia, who lived all his life in forests for the purpose of observing their manners and gathering their honey.

There are many passages in the Scriptures alluding to this admirable insect. The sons of Jacob are described as taking to Joseph, their brother, a little balm and a little honey for a present; and a curious and entertaining account of a trial of wisdom between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, which was decided by a swarm of bees, is related in the Talmud.

Galen says that he had frequently seen honey upon trees and plants in parts of the country where no bees lived, and that the peasants in these cases called out, "Jupiter has rained honey." Some writers have confounded manna with dew; but manna was a round substance falling upon the dew, and as small as hoar-frost. When the sun waxed hot, it melted; its colour was like that of bdellium; it resembled coriander seed; and it had the taste of fresh oil; but, if kept till the next day, it bred worms and stank. Grinding it in mills, the Israelites made cakes of it