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But no, I am mistaken; from the beginning of all things the Creator knew, that one day the inquisitive children of men would grope about after analogies and homologies, and that Christian naturalists would busy themselves with thinking out his Creative ideas; at any rate, in order to facilitate the discernment by the former that the opercular peduncle of the Serpulae is homologous with a branchial filament, He allowed it to make a detour in its development, and pass through the form of a barbate branchial filament.
This durability is much the most curious fact in its history: it is due to a tough layer, a few inches thick, of calcareous matter, wholly formed by the successive growth and death of the small shells of Serpulae, together with some few barnacles and nulliporae.
On the Diamond you will find many, or most of those gay creatures which attract your eye in the central row of tanks at the Zoological Gardens: great twisted masses of Serpulae, those white tubes of stone, from the mouth of which protrude pairs of rose-coloured or orange fans, flashing in, quick as light, the moment that your finger approaches them or your shadow crosses the water.
The upper surface of the calcareous stone below is completely incrusted over with a continuous pavement, formed by the stony roots or attachments of the Crinoidea; and besides this evidence of the length of time they had lived on the spot, we find great numbers of single joints, or circular plates of the stem and body of the encrinite, covered over with serpulae.
What say the schools to this case? Whence and for what purpose, if the Serpulae were produced or created as ready-formed species, these lateral filaments of the opercular peduncle?
These insignificant organic beings, especially the Serpulae, have done good service to the people of Pernambuco; for without their protective aid the bar of sandstone would inevitably have been long ago worn away and without the bar, there would have been no harbour. On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country.
I did not doubt that the black soil, which when dry, cakes hard, was entirely of terrestrial origin, but on examining it under the microscope, I found many very minute rounded fragments of shells, amongst which I could distinguish bits of Serpulae and mussels. In a bed of shells, a few feet below the 350 feet bed, I found a horn of the little Cervus humilis, which now inhabits Chiloe.
This durability is much the most curious fact in its history: it is due to a tough layer, a few inches thick, of calcareous matter, wholly formed by the successive growth and death of the small shells of Serpulae, together with some few barnacles and nulliporae.
These insignificant organic beings, especially the Serpulae, have done good service to the people of Pernambuco; for without their protective aid the bar of sandstone would inevitably have been long ago worn away and without the bar, there would have been no harbour. On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country.
Several of the univalves had evidently long lain dead at the bottom of the sea, for their INSIDES were incrusted with Balani and Serpulae. All, according to Mr. G.B. Sowerby, are recent species: they consist of: Mytilus Magellanicus: same as that found at Valparaiso, and there stated to be probably distinct from the true M. Magellanicus of the east coast.
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