Aunt Hester would have shared my task, but when at eve she tried,
With many a fond persuasive word, to win me from his side,
I felt the slacken'd grasp that held my hand again grow strong,
As Willy whisper'd, "Not to-night! I shall not need you long."

She shook her head and turned away, yet left us not alone,
She marked a shade I did not see across his features thrown;
And his slow and solemn breathing, like a warning and a sign,
Was falling on her boding ear, though all unmark'd by mine.

I recollect the beauty of that warm midsummer night,
The radiance of the moonbeams, that eclipsed the taper's light,
And flooded all the chamber with the same soft lustrous gleam,
That, when the fancy pictures, heaven illumes the happy dream.
And Willy, lying silently, seem'd listening while I spake

Of all his Saviour Christ had done and suffer'd for his sake;

When suddenly unearthly joy lit up his pallid face,

And he started up like one who seeks some half-seen form to trace.

Then pointing to the casement, with exulting voice he cried,
"Look, Ellen! 'tis my mother!" and I turned my head aside,
Yet did but see the lonely moon sail on her cloudless way,

And the jasmine boughs whose pearly stars were glistening in her ray.

I said, "You dream, my Willy," and stoop'd down to kiss his brow,
And saw-O God! what then I saw is present to me now!
For smiling there, as if with life, all life's distress had fled,
My brother in the moonlight lay, so beautiful, yet dead!

And a strange expression blending holy peace and glad surprise,
Had effaced the look of sorrow:-Is it true, that dying eyes
Have vision that can pierce the mists that fold us round, and screen
That heaven whose pitying angels float so near us, yet unseen?

I thought so, as I knelt beside my brother's dreamless sleep,
Feeling no anguish in the tears I could not choose but weep;
And my whole sad heart assented, while Aunt Hester praying near,
Gave thanks for one "departed in God's holy faith and fear.”

Yes, I thank'd God for Willy then, forgiven and taken home,
Where sin and sorrow never more to vex his rest might come;
And nothing since has moved my heart to crave him back to share
My fleeting hours of happiness or tedious days of care.

For the peace of God is better than this mad world's fitful mirth,
And the homes above are happier than these troubled homes of earth.
I've no delight to offer him like that which gladdens heaven,

And I would not have him grieve with me when days of pain are given.

Yet when I see a young man take a high exalted stand,

With those whose manly virtues are the glory of our land;
Or soothe a parent's slow decline, with many a tender wile,
Or brighten up some lowly home with cheering word and smile:
Remembering what my brother was, and what he should have been,
The sin whose cloud and darkness rose himself and God between;
His early promise, and the blight that came its buds to chill,
The long-closed wound bleeds freshly, and I weep for Willy still!

H. F.

CORAL-WORKERS AND THEIR DOINGS.

BY MISS SARAH S. FARMER.

A RECENT writer on the earth says that, "probably, there is not an atom of the solid materials of the globe which has not passed through the laboratory of life." Rocks, thousands of miles in extent, are found to be nearly half composed of microscopic shells; and deposits, several feet in thickness, and stretching over many miles, are made up of animals so small that 'eight millions of them do not fill up a space larger than a mustard seed!" A large part of the limestone called coral-rag, in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Wilts, and Yorkshire, is filled with beds and ledges of petrified coral, of many species, still retaining the position in which they once grew in the sea.

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If we had heard that the great Master-Builder of this world of ours intended to employ creature-agency in making islands, which, among the many living beings that we know, should we have judged most fit for the work? Surely we should have turned to some of the large quadrupeds, with great tusks and teeth,

and strong paws;-or to birds of swift wing, powerful talons, and sharp cutting bill;-or to man, creation's lord, with his sagacity and skill, and power of bending things animate and inanimate to his own purposes. But which of these could have done it? Birds build most curious nests; and one, the megapoelius, a native of Australia, and found also in the Possession Islands, constructs a mound ten or twelve feet high, with sloping sides from eighteen to twentyfour feet in length, piling up earth and fragments of coral to cover her eggs. Ants rear large dome-like homes and granaries; beavers dam up running streams, plaster their huts and plant their villages; man builds cities and pyramids, and more wonderful breakwaters; but all these creature-doings fall short of the productions of the coral-workers. This is one instance among many that shows us how God chooses weak things for mighty works.

We look at the four great departments of the animal kingdom, and, passing by the three former, which include all the more highly-organized animals, we take the fourth department-Radiata. This division has three classes sea-urchins, jelly-fishes, and polyps. We take the lowest class, polyps.

The polyps are animals fixed to one place, like plants, having a series of flexible arms round their mouths. They have curious ways. Their number is increased not only by eggs, but also by buds that sprout from the parent body, and in some kinds by division. A cleft is seen in the perfect animal, slight at first, but constantly increasing in depth, till, after a time, two are formed out of one, so much alike that you could not tell the child from the parent. Some polyps are solitary; others grow in company on one common base. There is a singular connection subsisting among thousands of distinct individuals thus having a common body. There seems to be a transmission of will through the whole, as perfect as in the

limbs of a single animal. Thus, a change of colour at the base has been observed to spread upwards to the tips of branching corallines.

Observe the next specimen of coral that you meet with. You perceive the many small holes in its surface. When that was a living coral, the heads and arms of its inhabitants protruded from these holes; indeed, the stony part was often almost covered by the soft animal substance. The polyps, however, have the power of drawing themselves back into their hard framework. They are very large eaters-more particular about the quantity than the quality of their food. They help to clear away many impurities, and thus perform the same good office in the water that many kinds of insects perform on land.

The kinds of coral that are the chief reef-builders belong to the genera Madrepora Astræa, Caryophyllia, Mæandrina, and Millepora. These are hard names, but I am sorry to say the unhappy corals have none easier. The number of these polyps in the waters of warm climates is immense. Numbers beyond count are at work, day by day, in constructing their small and lasting cells-cells which are their homes while they live and their graves when they die. It used to be thought that coral-polyps were able to build up steep walls from great depths in the sea; but this notion is not now regarded as true; no corals have been found living and working at a greater depth than from twenty to thirty fathoms.

Living corals are never found building upon living corals. The reefs that they construct are raised layer upon layer by successive generations; the houses of the living race having for their foundation the graves of the past race.

The coral creation is of three kinds,-Atolls, Barrier-reefs, and Fringing-reefs. The Atoll rises above the waves, a circular or oval strip of land, varying in breadth, and enclosing a lake or lagoon of smooth

water.

This ring-like sea wall has generally one, and often many openings. It is always highest on the windward side. The Barrier-reef is like the atoll, only it is either found running parallel to a coast or enclosing one or more islands. The largest coral reef in the world is the Barrier-reef that guards the northeast coast of Australia. It is eleven hundred miles in length, and varies in its distance from the shore from ten or fifteen to a hundred miles. The islands that are encircled by reefs are often mountainous. Their shores are washed by the waters of the lagoons; and about two or three miles off, the protecting ring shields lake and islets from the might of an angry ocean. Fringing-reefs, as their name imparts, skirt the margin of a shore.

The lagoon-enclosing reefs are very numerous in the Pacific. Mr. Jukes, in his narrative of the surveying voyage of Her Majesty's ship "Fly," gives a beautiful description of their appearance at a distance. "There is a considerable beauty in a small coral reef, when viewed from a ship's mast-head at a short distance in clear weather. A small island, with a white sand beach and a tuft of trees, is surrounded by a symmetrically oval space of shallow water of a bright grass green colour, enclosed by a ring of glittering surf as white as snow, immediately outside of which is the rich dark blue of deep waters. All the sea is free from any mixture of sand or mud. Even when it breaks on a sand beach it retains its perfect purity, as the large grains of coral are heavy and do not break into mud; so that if a bucketful of coral sand be thrown into the sea, it may be seen gradually sinking like a white cloud, without producing any discoloration in the surrounding water. It is this perfect clearness which renders navigation among coral reefs practicable, as a shoal with five fathoms water on it can be discerned at a mile distance from a ship's mast-head in