CHEEVER.

In the course of certain researches into the coral formations around New Holland, it was observed by Captain Flinders, what we have taken note of elsewhere, that to be constantly covered with water seemed necessary to the continued existence and activity of the coral animalcules. It cannot indeed be perceived that they are living at all, except in holes upon the coral reef itself that are below low-water mark, where we have often watched the progress of their rising structures, when we could not detect with the closest inspection the busy little builders themselves; yet imagination has been busy in tracing their work as Eneas was, under the cloud, at young Carthage:

"Miratur molem Æneas, magalia quondam ;
Miratur portas, strepitumque, et strata viarum
Fervet opus."

Almost as fast as they build, the coral-sand, always suspended and washed about in sea-water, fills up the little cells, and pores, and interstices of the minute masonry, while broken remnants of dead coral and other matter thrown up by the sea are caught and cemented to the growing wall, and form a solid mass with it as high as the common tides reach. When that limit is attained, and the surface of the reef is now out of or even with the water, the labor of the coralligenous zoophyte is over, the sea gradually recedes, the rampart rises, the limed debris or fragments upon it, being now rarely covered with water and dried by the sun, lose their adhesiveness and become brittle remnants, forming what is called sometimes a key upon the top of the reef, from the Spanish Cayo.

This new bank is, of course, not long in being visited by sea-birds; salt-plants take root upon it, branches of floating sea-weed are caught and entangled by it; muscles, and crabs, and echinuses, and turtles, and krakens, perhaps crawl upon it,

and leave their shells, and a soil begins to be form ed. By and by a cocoa-nut or the drupe of a tropical Pandanus is thrown ashore; land-birds light on it and deposit the seeds of shrubs and trees, and augment it, may be, with a layer of guano; every high tide, and still more, every gale adds something to the bank in the shape of matterwrecks, organic or inorganic; at length appears the blue hummock of a tropical island, and last of all comes man to take possession, cast there by Providence and glad not to have the sea his grave, or in quest of discovery and gain. We have repeatedly seen and stepped upon progressive and unfinished parts of creation like this, where, as traced by a poet-observer of the processes of Nature

"The atom thrown from the boiling deep,
The palm-tree torn from its distant steep,
The grain by the wandering wild-bird sown,
The seed of flowers by the tempest strown,
The long kelp forced from its rocky bed,
And the cocoa-nut, on the waters shed;
They gather around the coral's lee,
And form the isle of the lonely sea."

There is an island in Australia called Half-way Island, from the fact, we believe, that nature does not yet seem done with it, or to have finished its creation; yet above the reach of the highest spring tides or the wash of the surf in the heaviest gale, A navigator who has visited it says, that he distinguished in the coral-rock which forms its basis the sand, coral, and shells formerly thrown up and cemented together by the lime always held in solution by sea-water. Small pieces of wood also, pumice-stone, and other extraneous bodies which chance had mixed with the calcareous substances when the cohesion began, were enclosed in the rock, and in some cases were still separable from it without much force. We have observed the same at the lonely South Pacific

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island of Rimatara, over whose verdure-clad coral remains we once had a joyous day's ramble. The same is true, also, as the writer has often noticed, of reefs at the Sandwich Islands, where, as at Honolulu for instance, blocks of it are quarried from exposed reefs, and used for building purposes, to which it is well adapted, beside supplying a quantity of lime as inexhaustible as the coal-pits of Great Britain are of coal.

From an admirable little work on corals, published not long since in the Scientific and Natural History Series of the London Tract Society, and containing a number of very accurate woodcuts, representing different species of coral polypi and corallines, we learn that coral is found in different parts of the Mediterranean and Red Sea, not only attached to rocks, but also to movable bodies, as stone vases and fragments of lava. It is also discovered at different depths, but thrives best in a warm and sunny aspect. Light operates powerfully in its growth; and its deposition by the living creature is by no means rapid. It is thought to require eight years for a stem of Mediterranean or Red Sea coral to obtain the average height of ten or twelve inches, in water from three to ten fathoms deep; ten years if the water is fifteen fathoms; twenty-five or thirty years if the water is a hundred fathoms; and at least forty years if the depth is one hundred and fifty fathoms. It is more beautiful in shallow water, where the light reaches it, than where an immense body, absorbing most of the luminous rays, deprives it of their curiously modifying influence. Having attained its full growth, it is soon pierced in every part by worms, which attack even the hardest rocks; it then loses its solidity, and but slight shocks detach it from its base. The polypi perish, and the coral stem, by attrition with the sea-worn pebbles, as it rolls along, is soon reduced to powder, or coral sand.

Captain Hall says of the reefs in the seas about Loo Choo, Indian Ocean, what I have often heard American whalemen say of those in the Mozambique Channel, which is the region of ocean most prolific in curious shells, that when the sea has left a reef for some time between the tides, it becomes dry, and appears to be a compact rock, exceedingly hard and ragged. But no sooner does the tide rise again, and the waves begin to wash over it, than millions of worms protrude themselves from holes on the surface, which were before quite invisible. "These animals are of a great variety of shapes and sizes, and in such prodigious numbers, that in a short time the whole surface of the rock appears to be alive and in motion. The most common of the worms was in the form of a star, with arms from four to six inches

long, which it moved about with a rapid motion, in all directions, probably in search of food. Others were so sluggish, that they were often mistaken for pieces of the rock; these were generally of a dark color, and from four to five inches long and two or three round. When the rock was broken from a spot near the level of high water, it was found to be a hard, solid stone; but if any part of it were detached at a level to which the tide reached every day, it was discovered to be full of worms of all different lengths and colors, some being as fine as a thread, and several feet long, generally of a very bright yellow, and sometimes of a blue color; while others resembled snails, and some were not unlike lobsters and prawns in shape, but soft, and not above two inches long."

There is a variety of coral of microscopic minuteness in its structure, of which the naturalists Ehrenberg and D'Orbigny have discovered hundreds of fossil species; and their minute shelly cases enter into the composition of chalk-beds, compact mountain-limestone, the sea-sand of Europe, the Mauritius, the Sandwich Islands, and the sands of the Lybian Desert even. Some idea of the minuteness of these fossil moss-corals may be formed from the fact, that in the finest levigated whiting, multitudes are present without having suffered change in the preparation of the chalk. Only let the microscope be employed, and it is said that a Mosaic work of moss-coral animalcules may be seen, of varied and beautiful forms, on the chalk coating of the walls of a room. The best way of observing them is to place a drop of water on a delicate film of mica, and to add to it as much fine chalk powder as the top of a pen-knife will take up. Spread this out like a very thin layer, then drain off the water, and with it the floating particles; when the layer is quite dry, coat it over with pure Canada balsam, holding it while this is being done over a spirit lamp. Then the powder, examined through a microscope, will be found chiefly composed of minute cells, the relics of moss-corals.

A man naturally asks, in studying the diversities of corals, and the curiously modified forms of beauty they assume, What ends do they serve? and what is all this for? And it were a good answer in the words of the Psalmist, when he was attempting to uncover and describe some of the curious processes of Nature, "O Lord, how manifold are thy works in wisdom thou hast made them all!" Aside from the utilitarian ends, they serve in building up from the bed of ocean places of habitation for man and beast, and thus affording the material in such exhaustless affluence, out of which art may construct temples for God, and

:

BY REV. JOHN

8. C. ABBOTT.

THREE days after the marriage of Henry and Marguerite, while all Paris was alive with ostentatious festivities, the Admiral Coligni, a nobleman of great distinction in the Protestant ranks, and the most prominent counsellor and friend of Henry of Navarre, apprehensive from undefined whisperings and mysterious movements that some dark plot was in progress, obtained permission to leave Paris. As, with his retinue, he was returning from the royal palace to his apartments, in preparation for his departure, a musket was discharged at him, from a dwelling on the corner of a street, and the Admiral fell from his horse, pierced by two balls, severely, but not mortally wounded. The attendants of the Admiral rushed into the house. The assassin, however, escaped through a back window, and mounting a fleet horse, stationed there, and which was subsequently proved to have belonged to one of the brothers of the king, avoided arrest. It was however clearly established that the assassin was in connivance with some of the most prominent Catholics of the realm.

The King of France and his mother vied with each other in voluble and noisy declarations of their utter abhorrence of the deed. But all the blasphemous oaths of Charles, and all the vociferous asseverations of Catharine, did but strengthen the conviction of the Protestants that they both were implicated in this plot of assassination. Henry, alarmed in view of this treachery, and overwhelmed with indignation and sorrow, hastened to the bedside of his wounded friend. The Protestants, unarmed and helpless in the city of Paris, and panic-stricken by these indications of relentless perfidy, immediately made preparations to escape from the city. Even Henry, bewildered by the rumors of plots and perils which were continually borne to his ear, demanded permission to leave the metropolis, and to retire to his own dominions. Charles and Catharine were unwearied in their endeavors to allay this excitement and soothe these alarms. They became renewedly clamorous in their expressions of grief and indignation in view of the assault upon the Admiral. Charles placed a strong guard around

the house where the wounded nobleman lay, ostensibly for the purpose of protecting him from any popular outbreak, but in reality, as it subsequently appeared, to guard against his escape through the intervention of his friends. He also most perfidiously urged the Protestants in the city to occupy quarters near each other, that, in case of trouble, they might more easily be protected by him, and might more effectually aid one another. His real object however was, to gather them together for the approaching slaughter. The Protestants were in the deepest perplexity. They were not sure but that all their apprehensions were groundless. And they knew not but that in the next hour, some fearful battery would be unmasked for their destruction. They were unarmed, unorganized, and unable to make any preparation to meet an unknown danger. The king's protestations of good faith and kindness were unceasing, and his complaisance and polite attentions unremitted. Catharine, whose depraved, yet imperious spirit, was guid. ing, with such consummate duplicity, all this enginery of intrigue, hourly administered the stimulus of her own stern will, to sustain the faltering purpose of her equally depraved but fickle-minded and imbecile boy.

It was on Friday the 22d of August, that the bullets of the assassin wounded Coligni. The next day Henry call ed, with his bride, to visit his friend. Marguerite had but few sympathies with the chamber of suffering, and after a few cold and common-place phrases of condolence with her husband's bosom friend, she hastened away, leaving Henry to perform alone the offices of friendly sympathy. While the young King of Navarre was thus sitting at the bedside of the Admiral, recounting the assurances of faith and honor given him by Catharine and her son, the question was under discussion, at the palace, by this very Catharine and Charles, whether Henry, the husband of the daughter of the one and the sister of the other, should be included with the rest of the Protestants in the approaching massacre. Charles manifested some reluctance to take the life of his early playmate and friend, his bro

ther-in-law and his invited guest. It was, after much deliberation, decided to protect him from the general slaughter to which his friends were destined. Arrangements were then vigorously adopted to carry into execution one of the most sanguinary and inhuman massacres the world has ever witnessed.

The king sent for some leading officers of his troops, and commanded them immediately, but secretly, to arm the Roman Catholic citizens, and assemble them at midnight in front of the Hotel de Ville. Each man was to wear a white cross upon his hat and a white linen badge upon his left arm, that the assassins might recognize each other. In the darkest hour of the night, when all the sentinels of vigilance and the powers of resistance should be most effectually enchained by sleep, the alarm-bell from the tower of the Palace of Justice was to toll the signal for the indiscriminate massacre of the Protestants. Men, women, and children, were alike to fall before the dagger of assassination. With a few individual exceptions, none were to be left to avenge the deed. The soldiers were to commence this drama of blood, and all faithful Catholics were enjoined immediately to aid in the extermination of the enemies of the Church of Rome. Thus would God be glorified, and his kingdom promoted. The spirit of the age was in harmony with the act, and it cannot be doubted that there were those who had been so instructed by their spiritual guides, that they conscientiously thought that by this sanguinary sacrifice they were doing God service. The conspiracy extended throughout all the provinces of France.

Beacons were to flash the tidings from mountain to mountain. The peal of alarm was to ring along from steeple to steeple, from city to hamlet, from valley to hillside, till the whole Catholic population should be aroused to obliterate every vestige of Protestantism from the land. While Catharine and Charles were plotting this deed of infamy, even to the very last moment they maintained with the Protestants the appearance of friendship. They lavished caresses upon their generals and their nobles. By invitations and flattery they lured as many as possible to Paris. They entertained their doomed guests with sumptuous feasts and gorgeous festivals. Several of the Huguenot nobles slept in the palace of Charles on the very night of the massacre, entirely unconscious of danger, and amused by the pleasantries in which the king, that evening, seemed especially to indulge.

The lodgings of Henry of Navarre were in the Louvre. It had been decided to spare his life, as it was hoped that he would unite with the

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Catholic party when he should see the Protestant cause hopelessly ruined, and when it would be so manifestly for his interest to identify himself with those who held the reins of power. Many of the friends of Henry, of exalted rank, lodged also in the Louvre, in chambers contiguous to those which were occupied by their sovereign. The Duchess of Lorraine, the eldest sister of Marguerite, the young bride of Henry, aware of the carnage which the night was to witness, was apprehensive that the Protestants, as soon as they should awake to the treachery which surrounded them, would rush to the chamber of the king, for his protection, and would wreak their vengeance upon his Catholic spouse. When the hour for retiring arrived, she most earnestly entreated her sister not to share the same apartment with her husband, importuning her, even with tears, to occupy for the night some other portion of the palace. Catharine sharply reproved the Duchess of Lorraine for her imprudent remonstrance, and commanded the Queen of Navarre to withdraw. She departed to the nuptial chamber, wondering what could be the cause of the solicitude manifested by her sister. When she entered her husband's room, she found thirty or forty Huguenots assembled there, alarmed by mysterious rumors, which were floating from ear to ear, and by signs of agitation and secrecy, and strange preparation, which everywhere met the eye. No one knew what danger was impending; no one could imagine from what direction the threatened blow was to come. But that some very extraordinary event was about to transpire, was apparent to all. They did not venture to close their eyes in sleep, but all sat together as the hours of the night lingered slowly along, anxiously awaiting the developments with which the moments seemed to be fraught.

In the mean time, aided by the gloom of a starless night, in every street of Paris preparations were going on for the enormous perpetration. Soldiers were assembling in different places of rendezvous. Guards were stationed at important points, that their victims might not es