Coral and Coral Islands.

The substance called coral appears to have been considered as a vegetable substance till about the year 1720, when it was discovered to be a living animal of the polypus tribe.

The general name of zoophytes, or plantanimals, has since been applied to them, although some persons now call them lithophytes, or stone-plants. These animals, of which several species have been discovered, are furnished with minute glands, secreting a milky juice, concocted of animal gluten, calcareous earth, and other substances. This juice, when exuded from the animal, becomes fixed and concrete. Naturalists do not consider this substance merely as the habitation, but as a part of the animal itself, to which it bears the same relation as the shell of a snail or oyster does to those animals, and without which they cannot long exist. The production of this secretion is one of those processes of nature's chemistry which the skill of man has not enabled him to imitate or detect; but it is certain that by this means this diminutive

insect has the power of raising high masses of rocky substances,

capable of resisting the tremendous power of the ocean, even when agitated by the highest pitch of winds and tempests.

The coral insect is found in most of the great seas, and is particularly abundant in the Mediterranean, where it produces corallines of the most beautiful forms and colours; but it is in the Pacific Ocean where these tiny workmen are effecting these mighty changes, which exceed the most stupendous works of man. That part of the Pacific

in which these operations are going on has been called the dangerous Archipelago, from the number of coral reefs and sunken islands with which it abounds; but latterly it has been called the Coral Sea. It comprehends a region of many hundred miles in extent, the whole of which is thickly studded with reefs, rocks, islands, and columns of coral continually moving nearer to each other.

The principal groups of islands of coral formation are from the New Hebrides eastward, the Friendly Islands, Norwegian Islands, and the Society Islands; and to the northward of the latter group the Marquesas. These groups are separated from each other by

SOMETHING ABOUT SPONGE AND CORAL.

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channels or seas, wider than those which separate the individual islands which form the respective groups; but all these waters abound with shoals and minor islets, which indicate the existence of a common base, and show that the processes by which they will be hereafter united above the level of the sea are in constant operation.

The structure and progress of these islands towards a state of fitness for the habitation of man has been thus described :-At a vast, but unknown, depth beyond the surface of the sea, the insects attach themselves to the upper points and ridges of rocks which form the

bottom of the ocean, and many of which, in the Pacific Ocean, are supposed to be of volcanic origin. Upon these foundations the little architects labour, building up pile upon pile of their rocky habitations, until at length the work rises above the sea, and is continued to such a height as to leave it almost dry at low water, when the insect leaves off building at that part. A solid rocky base being thus formed, fragments of coral, sea-sand, and various other matters, gradually become fixed upon it; and afterwards, the seed of plants, or trunks of trees, washed from the great rivers of other countries and islands,

find here a resting-place, till at last the island is covered with vegetation in various forms. Man finally takes up his abode there, and finishes the great work which the little coral insect began.

Wyclif and his Teachings.

HE very name of Wyclif awakens sentiments of gratitude and veneration in every generous heart. and brings us to think of the constellation of great men who, in times of great danger and difficulty, nobly dared to oppose the tyrannical usurpation of the Church of Rome, and who sacrificed every valuable consideration on earth to the cause of truth and liberty. Wyclif was in religion what Bacon was in science-the great detector of those arts and glosses which, under the barbarism of ages, had drawn together to obscure the mind of man.

John Wyclif, called the morning star of the Reformation, was born about the year 1324, near Richmond, in Yorkshire; of his childhood nothing is certainly known, but we learn that when only sixteen, he was admitted commoner of Queen's College, Oxford. He was afterwards removed to Merton College, where he was first Probationer, and afterwards Fellow.