“The prodigious extent of the combined and unintermitting labours of these little world-architects must be witnessed in order to be adequately conceived or realized. They have built up 400 miles of barrier-reef on the shores of Caledonia; and on the north-east coast of Australia their labours extend for 1000 miles in length; averaging a quarter of a mile in breadth, and one hundred and fifty feet in depth. The geologist, in contemplating these stupendous operations, learns to appreciate the circumstances by which were deposited, in ancient times, those mountain-masses of limestone, for the most part coralline, which abound in many parts of our native island.”—_Ansted’s Ancient World_, p. 32. Footnote 54: Zoologists class the Marsupiala as the very lowest form of Mammalia, and but little removed above the cold-blooded Reptilia. They are a connecting link between those two great classes of Vertebrata. The Ornithorynchus is an animal of still lower organization. The whole fauna and flora of Australia indicate a newly-formed land, and are analogous to those of the Poilitic and New Red Sandstone ages of the Northern Hemisphere; which in like manner succeeded Coralline Limestones, and in which small islands began to be united into large islands and quasi-continents. Footnote 55: Leeds Mercury, Jan. 1848. Footnote 56: Church Missionary Report, 1848. Footnote 57: INDIA.—England holds in subjection _one hundred millions of heathens and idolaters_. India is at once our glory and our shame. Though we have been masters there for nearly a century, little has yet been done towards the Christianizing of that mighty empire.—_Appeal of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts_, 1848. LONDON PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. NEW-STREET SQUARE ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES ● P. 7, changed “This a drawback which we feel greatly” to “This is a drawback which we feel greatly”. ● P. 73, changed “they turn their tales round” to “they turn their tails round”. ● P. 149, changed “lest in should foment a war” to “lest it should foment a war”. ● Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. ● Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. ● Footnotes were re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.