But if the sea map be considered as an aquarium, (that is, a body of water supporting animal and vegetable life), better expressed by the term _aquavivarium_—so may it be considered a cemetery, an _aquamortuum_. The life, so profuse, that takes into itself bodies of endless forms and sizes, finally yields them up to the sea, and they are buried in the bottom. There is no land where the sea has not been, and where “vestiges of creation” may not be found. If we ascend to the highest mountain, or descend to the lowest valley, behold there are diatoms, shells of mollusks, débris of corals, and bones of whales. Whence came they? Science can answer no better than Scripture: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein. For He hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods.” Beside the natural course of life and death, there are various ways by which the inhabitants of the sea may be suddenly destroyed. As, for instance: by the influx of fresh water; by volcanic agency; by earthquake waves; by storms; by suffocation when crowded into shoals, weeds, sand, etc.; being driven ashore by fishes of prey; too much or too little heat; diseases and parasites; poisons; lightning; and many other agencies. Although the sea is immense, it has bounds and limits; thus far and no farther, is the command of Him that made it. I am overpowered with the immensity of the subject. In trying to comprehend the whole it is impossible to see the minutia; or to compass within our limits one fairly developed idea. I think, however, we have arrived at a point of knowledge where we may answer an oft repeated question: “Why the Almighty has created so many insects, covering the earth, swarming in the air, or teeming in the waters?” They doubtless have many purposes, that in our dim knowledge we do not see, but they serve at least one important end; they are carbon makers, and without carbon no plant can grow, and without the plant what would become of the animal? So, to a certain extent our lives depend on the things which ofttimes only seem to annoy us. We are so ground in the mills of God, so built, linked and woven, so dependent and so cared for by the power that is in us, that the microscope can see nothing too small, that does not concern us in its use and sphere of action; and the telescope can behold no world so grand but it, too, may be considered only an aggregated expression of what we find in the miniature object. No organism that lives and dies in the sea is lost or wasted, and like the drops of water that are scattered and spread abroad over the universe, and are gathered again to the sea, so do all these forms of life that inhabit the deep serve an important purpose while living, and when the life has departed from their forms they leave their good works behind them in the shape of iron, lime, silica, and carbon, for the use and the convenience of other lives that succeed them. MY YEARS.