men, of animals, of plants. In the vast Pacific it is founding a new continent; it is constructing a new world. This process is equally visible in the Red Sea, which is daily becoming less and less navigable, in consequence of the growth of its coral rocks; and the day is to come when perhaps one plain will unite the opposed shores of Egypt and Arabia.

6. These are among the wonders of His mighty hand: such are among the means which He uses to forward His ends of benevolence. Yet man, vain man, pretends to look down on the myriads of beings equally insignificant in appearance, because he has not yet discovered the great offices which they hold, the duties which they fulfill in the great order of nature.

LESSON IV. THE CORAL INSECT.*

[The representations here given are the united stony cells or habitations of the coralbuilding zoophytes, each species having its own peculiar structure. Every minute portion of this calcareous or lime rock is more or less surrounded by a soft animal substance (the zoophyte), capable of expanding itself, but otherwise fixed to its habitation; yet, when alarmed, it has the power of contracting itself almost entirely into the cells and hollows of the hard coral. These soft parts become, when taken from the sea, nothing more in appearance than a brown slime spread over the stony nucleus. Yet these jelly-like animals are the builders of the coral reefs. See Seventh Reader for a description of this class of animals.]

COMMON CORAL-BUILDING ZOOPHYTES.-1. Meandrina labyrinthica. 2. Astrea dipsacea. 3. Madrepora muricata. 4. Porites clavaria. 5. Caryophyllia fastigiata. 6. Oculina hirtella.

1. To on toil on! ye ephemeral train,

Who build in the tossing and treacherous main;
Toil on-for the wisdom of man ye mock,

With your sand-based structures and domes of rock;

Your columns the fathomless fountains lave,

And your arches spring up to the crested wave;

Ye're a puny race thus to boldly rear

A fabric so vast in.a realm so drear.

2. Ye bind the deep with your secret zone,

The ocean is sealed, and the surge a stone;

Fresh wreaths from the coral pavement spring,
Like the terraced pride of Assyria's king;

The little coral-building animal, or polyp, was long ago called the coral insect, a term quite improper, but one that is still retained in popular use.

The turf looks green where the breakers rolled;
O'er the whirlpool ripens the rind of gold;
The sea-snatched isle is the home of men,

And mountains exult where the wave hath been.
3. But why do ye plant 'neath the billows dark
The wrecking reef for the gallant bark?

There are snares enough on the tented field,
'Mid the blossomed sweets that the valleys yield;
There are serpents to coil ere the flowers are up;
There's a poison-drop in man's purest cup;
There are foes that watch for his cradle breath,
And why need ye sow the floods with death?
4. With mouldering bones the deeps are white,
From the ice-clad pole to the tropics bright;
The mermaid hath twisted her fingers cold
With the mesh of the sea-boy's curls of gold,
And the gods of ocean have frowned to see
The mariner's bed in their halls of glee;
Hath earth no graves, that ye thus must spread
The boundless sea for the thronging dead?

5. Ye build-ye build-but ye enter not in,

Like the tribes whom the desert devoured in their sin;
From the land of promise ye fade and die,

Ere its verdure gleams forth on your weary eye;
As the kings of the cloud-crowned pyramid,
Their noteless bones in oblivion hid,

Ye slumber unmarked 'mid the desolate main,

While the wonder and pride of your works remain.

MRS. SIGOURNEY.

Fail not with weariness; for on their tops

The beauty and the majesty of earth,

Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget

The steep and toilsome way. There, as thou stand'st,
The haunts of men below thee, and above,

The mountain summits, thy expanding heart

Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world

To which thou art translated, and partake

The enlargement of thy vision. Thou shalt look

Upon the green and rolling forest tops,

And down into the secrets of the glens

And streams, that, with their bordering thickets, strive
To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze at once,

Here on white villages, and tilth, and herds,

And swarming roads; and there, on solitudes

That only hear the torrent, and the wind,
And eagle's shriek.—BBYANT.

2. "There is a charm," says Howitt, "connected with mountains, so powerful that the merest mention of them, the merest sketch of their magnificent features, kindles the imagination, and carries the spirit at once into the bosom of their enchanted regions. How the mind is filled with their vast solitude! how the inward eye is fixed on their silent, their sublime, their everlasting peaks! How our heart bounds to the music of their solitary cries, to the tinkle of their gushing rills, to the sound of their cataracts!

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3. When we let loose the imagination, and give it free charter to range through the glorious ridges of continental mountains, through Alps, Apennines, or Andes, how is it possessed and absorbed by all the awful magnificence of their scenery and character! by the sky-ward and inaccessible pinnacles, the

"Palaces where nature thrones
Sublimity in icy halls'!

the dark Alpine forests'; the savage rocks and precipices' the fearful and unfathomable chasms filled with the sound of ever-precipitating waters'; the cloud, the silence, the avalanche, the cavernous gloom, the terrible visitations of heaven's concentrated lightning, darkness, and thunder'; or the sweeter features of living, rushing streams, spicy odors of flower and shrub, fresh spirit-elating breezes sounding through the dark pine grove'; the ever-varying lights and shadows, and aerial hues; the wide prospects', and, above all, the simple inhabitants'!"

4. But beyond their moral grandeur and their charms of scenery, mountains subserve some very important purposes in the great economy of nature. Their influence upon the temperature and fertility of vast regions, and upon the formation and direction of clouds and air-currents, will be noticed in the lessons on the atmosphere. They are also the most com

mon boundaries of nations. Frequently the language spoken by the dwellers on one side of a mountain is unintelligible to the inhabitants of the other slope. And not only the language, but the moral, social, and political condition of man is influenced by the bold and picturesque scenery of mountain peaks,

"That wear their caps of snow In very presence of the regal sun."

5. Mountains on land, like mountains in the sea whose tops we call islands when they appear above the water, are seldom found detached or insulated. Sometimes, though rarely, they exist in aggregated groups, extending from a common centre and not externally connected; but most commonly they are in ranges or mountain chains, traversing extensive regions.

6. The great mountain ranges generally follow the direction of the continents, and it is to this circumstance that all large countries owe their peculiarities of climate and productions. "Suppose," said Guyot, "the Andes, transferred to the eastern coast of South America, hindered the trade-winds from bearing the vapors of the ocean into the interior of the continent, the plains of the Amazon and of Paraguay would be nothing but a desert."

7. When mountain chains occur near coasts, it has been observed that their slope is steeper toward the ocean than toward the interior. It has also been remarked that the mountains of the Eastern continent have their long slopes toward the north, and the steep or short slopes toward the south. In the Western continent the long slopes are toward the east, and the short slopes toward the west. The highest peak in the world, as far as ascertained, is Mount Everest, one of the Himalayas, which is 29,000 feet in altitude. Chimborazo, the most elevated point ever reached by man, is 19,700 feet in height. Mount St. Elias, which is 17,860 feet in height, is the highest point in North America.

8. The Alps, famous in the records of military achievements as having been crossed by the armies of Hannibal and Napoleon, and pre-eminent for the picturesque grandeur of their scenery, are the most celebrated of all mountain elevations, and the highest in Europe. Mount Blanc, the loftiest peak, is an enormous mass of granite, reaching the height of 15,750 feet, the ascent to which is rendered exceedingly dif ficult by the surrounding walls of ice, fearful precipices, and the everlasting snows by which it is covered; yet its sum

mit has often been reached by adventurous tourists and men of science. The thoughts very naturally suggested to a contemplative mind by a view of these "proud monuments of God" are very happily expressed in the following lines:

9.

10.

11.

12.

THE ALPS.-WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK.

Proud monuments of God! sublime ye stand
Among the wonders of his mighty hand:
With summits soaring in the upper sky,

Where the broad day looks down with burning eye;
Where gorgeous clouds in solemn pomp repose,
Flinging rich shadows on eternal snows:
Piles of triumphant dust, ye stand alone,
And hold, in kingly state, a peerless throne!
Like olden conquerors, on high ye rear
The regal ensign and the glittering spear:
Round icy spires the mists, in wreaths unrolled,
Float ever near, in purple or in gold;
And voiceful torrents, sternly rolling there,
Fill with wild music the unpillared air:

What garden, or what hall on earth beneath,
Thrills to such tones as o'er the mountains breathe?
There, through long ages past, those summits shone
When morning radiance on their state was thrown;
There, when the summer day's career was done,
Played the last glory of the sinking sun;
There, sprinkling lustre o'er the cataract's shade,
The chastened moon her glittering rainbow made;
And, blent with pictured stars, her lustre lay,
Where to still vales the free streams leaped away.
Where are the thronging hosts of other days,
Whose banners floated o'er the Alpine ways;
Who, through their high defiles, to battle wound,
While deadly ordnance stirred the heights around?
Gone; like the dream that melts at early morn,
When the lark's anthem through the sky is borne:
Gone; like the wrecks that sink in ocean's spray,
And chill Oblivion murmurs, Where are they?

13.

Yet "Alps on Alps" still rise; the lofty home
Of storms and eagles, where their pinions roam;

Still round their peaks the magic colors lie,

Of morn and eve, imprinted on the sky;

And still, while kings and thrones shall fade and fall,

And empty crowns lie dim upon the pall

Still shall their glaciers flash; their torrents roar;
Till kingdoms fail, and nations rise no more.

14. Great as the elevations of mountains seem to us, they are small compared with the globe itself. A grain of sand on a twelve-inch globe would represent a mountain relatively much higher than the loftiest of the Himalayas. And so small a portion of the globe is the sum of all the mountains, that its diameter would be but slightly increased if they were leveled to their bases, and spread over its surface.

15. Yet, comparatively slight as these elevations are, showing the narrow range, in point of elevation from the sea-level, to which man is confined, they furnish him by far the best opportunities which he has for observing the phenomena of na