OXENDEN PREACHES A SERMON "Magones," said the doctor, "is clearly a volcanic island, and, taken in connection with the other volcanoes around, shows how active must be the subterranean fires at the South Pole.

It seems probable to me that the numerous caves of the Kosekin were originally fissures in the mountains, formed by convulsions of nature; and also that the places excavated by man must consist of soft volcanic rock, such as pumice-stone, or rather tufa, easily worked, and remaining permanently in any shape into which it may be fashioned.

As to Magones, it seems another Iceland; for there are the same wild and hideous desolation, the same impassable wildernesses, and the same universal scenes of ruin, lighted up by the baleful and tremendous volcanic fires." "But what of that little island on which they landed ?" asked Featherstone.

"That, surely, was not volcanic." "No," said the doctor; "that must have been a coral island." "By-the-bye, is it really true," asked Featherstone, "that these coral islands are the work of little insects ?" "Well, they may be called insects," replied the doctor; "they are living zoophytes of most minute dimensions, which, however, compensate for their smallness of size by their inconceivable numbers.

Small as these are they have accomplished infinitely more than all that ever was done by the ichthyosaurus, the plesiosaurus, the pterodactyl, and the whole tribe of monsters that once filled the earth.