sufficiently suggestive to turn the attention of our readers that way.
Before parting with them, however, we wish to make a few excursions
into the natural world, to follow out some of the more peculiar and
unexpected migrations of material atoms. Suppose we take a little
marble,--which, in chemical constitution, is carbonate of lime,--that
very marble, for instance, which forms the palaces of Venice, against
which the waters of the Mediterranean have dashed for so many centuries,
and have not dashed in vain. In their perpetual washing, they have worn
away the stone and carried off its particles,--an insignificant amount,
it is true, but, little as it is, it has not remained unused. For
that very carbonate of lime, which once shared the proud state of the
"glorious city in the sea," now helps to form the coarse shells of
oysters, or is embodied in the vast coral reefs that shoot out from the
islands of the West Indies, or is deposited year after year by dying
shell-fish, which are slowly carpeting the ocean-bed with their remains.
Much of this same Venice marble has doubtless been appropriated by
fishes from the sea-water which dissolved it, been transformed into
their bones, cast upon the soil of Italy, disintegrated, and imbibed by
the thirsty roots of forests in sight of the very walls from which it
parted. And who can say that parts of it do not now adorn the necks of
some Venetian dames, in coral, or more costly pearls? What says Ariel to
the orphaned Ferdinand?

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.