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Content summary: 22 September 1807: Abraham Crocker to William Cunnington - thanks him for the 'loan of scientific books and the presents of curious fossils. Is returning 'Ellis's treatise on Zoophytes'. \n ' I have for nearly half a century been an observer and consequently an admirer of Creation, as for my limited opportunities would permit :- and the result of my researches most fully convince me that every part thereof is beautiful in itself and the pure effect of infinite wisdom. Every subject both in its whole and in its parts, I perceive are most exactly adapted for the beneficent purposes for which they were designed. The result of that window is fully apparent in the construction of every organized being, which comes within the view and comprehension of the human faculties. There is no complex mode of procedure; all is performed under the simplest rules of creative energy; and preserved by Divine Providence, through every necessary and becoming of existence.\n On the subject of corallines, which is the basis of Mr Ellis's book, I hold a different opinion from some of the philosophers of the present day; a doctrine which represents those beautiful productions of Nature, the coralline genus, as the work of polypes and other aquatic animals, equally feeble. When a philosopher tells us that this beautiful specimen of coral, I hold in my hand, hard and impervious as it is, is contrived and formed by the instinct and feeble powers of so weak a tribe of animalcules as the polypes, as well may he persuade one that the rock on which the eagle places her occasional habitation, for the purpose on incubation, was raised by her own power; or that the sand bank on which the fox has excavated his dwelling is the workmanship of his own skill or to descend to the more minute parts of creation, as well may he persuade me that the minute animalcules, which have said to constitute the bloom on the plum are the secondary creator of the plum itself.\n One species of the polypes (the fresh water ones) I have been conversant with these forty years. I have observed them in every gradation of their animal existence. I have fed them for months together; I have cut them into various parts, and carefully observed their reproduction. I have studied their economies with much attention; and never could perceive in them the least power or endeavour to produce anything different from themselves. All of them are endowed with a Eco-motive property; but never are known to congregate with anything but their own young and that whilst they remined attached (perhaps by some umbilical cord0 to their own sides. - The species I have spoken of were in their skin so opaque as to exclude the possibility of examining the internal operations of nature. - … I have, a few times in my life been in possession of another species called the lusterpolype and which from the number and beauty of its tentacles or arms, may be called polype a panache. They congregate, living in close society; many of them together seemingly fixt to a little lump of gelatinous substance, which adheres to some decayed leaf, stick or straw in some small shallow, slowly flowing stream. These when brought to the broad light of day will protrude their bodies from the bed of jelly and spread abroad their tentacles (60 in number) beautifully white, thus lying in wait for food, imperceptible to our sight in the full enjoyment of an enclosed atmosphere. In this state of expansion they become one of the most engaging microscopic we have within our reach. So transparent are the integuments that the peristallic motion of the intestines is clearly discernable [sic]:- and the tentectula exhibit th emost beautiful display of the circulation of the blood that can be conceived, the globules of the fluid flowing form the heart up one ide of the tentecula, turn the apex, and gently glide down the other side, returning to the heart.\n\nKnowing these things as I do - and perceiving the analogy between these and the seapolpe,- could I be justified or forming or receiving, an opinion that Divine omniscience found it expedient to employ such feeble secondary agents as polypes to produce so hard, impenetrable, concrete a substance as Coral?\n\nShould it be asked , what then have polypes to do on or about Corallisies; the answer is most natural and easy - that the soft pulpy bark of the coral ( and they are surrounded and they are surrounded with such integument, (the tubipora excepted) is the most commodious nidus for polypes and other oviparous aquatic animalcules to deposit their eggs in. Here when the young burst forth into aniamal life, they are in possession of habitations which secure them from the violence of the element in which they are situated; at the same time allowing the free use of their tentecula in securing their prey on which their subsistence depends. Herein, in my opinion, both the Wisdom and Beneficence of the Creator are in visible harmony.; a harmony which I could never discover if the system of some philosopher's of the present day.\n Has asked the Master of the Vallis lime kiln to keep any fossils of 'singular appearance'. The tessellated pavement which was found at Wellow in 1737 has been reopened.

Summary: 22 September 1807: Abraham Crocker to William Cunnington - thanks him for the 'loan of scientific books and the presents of curious fossils. Is returning 'Ellis's treatise on Zoophytes'.