INFUSORIA AND OTHER ANIMALCULE. 



pass on now to examine another exten- 

 sive group of animals, still more wonder- 

 ful, and perhaps more interesting, than any 

 which precede. Here, under the highest 

 magnifying power of the microscope, we 

 find animals useful to man here, amidst the mil- 

 lions of invisible atoms which nature has so abun- 

 dantly scattered over the globe, we find delicate 

 and wonderful organisms, supplying us with food, 

 with pure water, with glass, with colours, and last, 

 not least, with an inexhaustible field of scientific 

 inquiry. Look where we will, we find them every- 

 where in our bodies, in our aliments, in our drinks, 

 in our preserves, in the water in which we bathe, 

 on our walls, on our glazed paper, on our visiting 

 cards, on our flowers, in the soil of our gardens, in 

 the woods and forests, in our meadows and their 

 trenches, in our ditches, ponds, lakes, rivers, seas, 

 and oceans, in the oldest sedimentary strata of the 

 earth, in the most recent strata, on the mountain 



