20 



THE UNIVERSE. 



nearly all that had been written on the subject of red water 

 from the days of Moses up to our own, gives a list of 

 twenty-two species of animals, and almost as many plants, 

 capable of communicating this blood color. 



When Ehrenberg planted his tent by the shore of the 

 Red Sea, near the town of Tor, not far from Mount Sinai, 

 he had the rare good fortune to behold this sea tinged with 

 the blood-red color to which, from the remotest antiquity, 

 it has owed its name. At this very time its waves deposited 

 on the shore a gelatinous matter of a beautiful purple color, 

 which the great Prussian naturalist recognized as being 

 3omposed of a single microscopic marine plant, the Red 

 Trichodesmia, the sole cause of this celebrated phenomenon. 

 Water is not the sole domain of microscopic animalcules. 



They are met with in the 

 earth, in masses which contain 

 them in such enormous num- 

 bers as to exceed all powers 

 of calculation. Certain spe- 

 cies, so extremely minute as 



8. The Red Trichodesmia (Trichodesmia not to equal the forty-five 

 rubra), seen under the microscope. ,-1 -1,1 . p 1 



thousandth part 01 an inch, 

 form in some damp places living beds beneath the soil, 

 which are often several yards in thickness. 



In North America these animal strata are found as much 

 as twenty feet thick, and among the heaths of Luneburg 

 there are some more than forty feet in thickness. The 

 city of Berlin is built upon one of these beds of animalcules, 

 which is even more than three times the size of the last 

 mentioned. Everything here strikes us with wonder. The 



