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Looked at from this point of view, the animal world is an intellectual Creation, complete in all its parts, and coherent throughout; and when we find, that, although these ancient types have become obsolete and been replaced by modern ones, yet there are always a few old-fashioned individuals, left behind, as it were, to give the key to the history of their race, as the Gar-Pike, for instance, to explain the ancient Fishes, the Millepore to explain the old Acalephian Corals, the Nautilus to be the modern exponent of the Ammonites and Orthoceratites of past times, we cannot avoid the impression that this Creative work has been intended also to be educational for Man, and to teach him his own relation to the organic world.
Fragments of Oculina gathered at the same place and of the same age are from one to three inches in length; but these belong to the lighter, more branching kinds of Corals, which, as we have seen, cannot, from their brittle character, be supposed to add their whole height to the solid mass of the Coral wall. Millepore gives a similar result.
I subjoin a woodcut of a Silurian Coral, which does not, however, show the peculiar internal structure, but gives some idea of the general appearance of the old Hydroid Corals. We have but one Acalephian Coral now living, the Millepore; and it was by comparing that with these ancient ones that I first detected their relation to the Acalephs.
I doubt if any inhabitant of Cincinnati ever mounted these hills so often as myself and my children; but it was rather for the enjoyment of a freer air than for any beauty of prospect, that we took our daily climb. These hills afford neither shrubs nor flowers, but furnish the finest specimens of millepore in the world; and the water courses are full of fossil productions.
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