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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: to the living and permanent knowledge of living things and of the
laws of their existence. Humbling, truly, to one who looks back to
the summer of 1754, when good Mr. Ellis, the wise and benevolent
West Indian merchant, read before the Royal Society his paper
proving the animal nature of corals, and followed it up the year
after by that "Essay toward a Natural History of the Corallines,
and other like Marine Productions of the British Coasts," which
forms the groundwork of all our knowledge on the subject to this
day. The chapter in Dr. G. Johnston's "British Zoophytes," p. 407,
or the excellent little RESUME thereof in Dr. Landsborough's book
on the same subject, is really a saddening one, as one sees how
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