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I selected a spot not too near the chasm, for there the constant deposition of the moisture nourished numbers of polypi of a mushroom shape and fleshy consistence, but somewhat back and made a little garden. I there planted about a hundred peach and apricot stones, and a quantity of coffee-seeds.

The morning of the 24th, in 12° 5' S. lat., and 94° 33' long., we observed Keeling Island, a coral formation, planted with magnificent cocos, and which had been visited by Mr. Darwin and Captain Fitzroy. The Nautilus skirted the shores of this desert island for a little distance. Its nets brought up numerous specimens of polypi and curious shells of mollusca.

Ulysses beheld her as on that first day near the temple of the poet, possessed with a fierce wrath against men, longing extravagantly for their extermination. Their digestion finished, the polypi had begun to swim around, and were now horizontal skeins, fluting the tank with elegance.

Small rocks of meandrites, madrepores, and other corals, either ramified or with a rounded surface, rise in this vast plain, and seem to attest the recent retreat of the sea. But these masses, which are the habitations of polypi, are only fragments imbedded in a breccia with a calcareous cement.

Whatever rises above the surface of the water is composed of broken pieces, cemented by carbonate of lime, in which grains of quartzose sand are set. Whether rocks formed by polypi still living are found at great depth below this fragmentary rock of coral or whether these polypi are raised on the Jura formation are questions which I am unable to answer.

As they looked over the side, many polypi, medusae, and squid were observed floating on the surface; and occasionally a covey of flying-fish, rising from the water, darted rapidly over it, quickly again, as their brilliant wings dried, to sink down and become the prey of their enemies, the dolphin or bonito. A seaman had just hauled a bucket of water on deck.

Polypi often spring up from the interior of the ear; they may be cut off with the scissors, or by the application of a fine wire, or horse-hair ligature. The wound should be touched with caustic, tincture of iodine, or the actual cautery. This affection generally accompanies the same disease in other portions of the body, but may occasionally make its appearance independent of this cause.

How comes it then, it will be asked, that they form islands which rise several feet above the sea? Although the polypi are the cause of the island being formed, they do not actually form it. They begin by building their nests on some foundation which instinct points out to them.

And I was at the lowest point of created life; a madrepore rooted to the rock, fathoms below the tide-mark; and worst of all, my individuality was gone. I was not one thing, but many things a crowd of innumerable polypi; and I grew and grew, and the more I grew the more I divided, and multiplied thousand and ten thousandfold.

To prove the existence of a God, write complete treatises of botany; enter into a minute detail of the parts of the human body; launch forth into the sky, to contemplate the revolution of the stars; then return to the earth to admire the course of waters; behold with transport the butterflies, the insects, the polypi, and the organized atoms, in which you think you discern the greatness of your God.