508 PROF. EHRENBERG ON THE INFUSORIA. 



(a species not hitherto recorded as British) introduced, and 

 formed into a separate genus named Teredus. 



Art. IV. — Die Infusions thierchen, als vollkommene Organismen; ein Blick 

 in das tie/ere organische Leben der Natur. Nebst einem Atlas von 64 col. 

 Kupfertafeln, gezeichnet von Verfasser. Von Prof. Eh re n berg. Royal 

 folio. Verlag von Ludw. Voss, Leipzig. 1 



This work, which may truly be looked upon as marking an 

 epoch in Natural History, contains on 133 printed sheets the 

 results which the most skilful and successful observer with 

 the microscope has obtained during many years of laborious 

 and persevering research, in different parts of the globe. It 

 may be said that the microscope has become, in the hands of 

 Prof. Ehrenberg, a means of information not less important 

 than the telescope has been, and still is, in those of the Her- 

 schels. And as Sir John Herschel did not restrict his inqui- 

 ry to our hemisphere, so has Prof. Ehrenberg studied the 

 minute organic productions of nature in distant parts; in 

 Afiica and Arabia (1820), and in the North of Asia (1829), 

 thus arriving at important conclusions as to the geographical 

 distribution of the animalcula. Any one, besides, who is at 

 all familiar with the discoveries made in this branch of sci- 

 ence during the last twenty years, must be sufficiently con- 

 vinced that the work, whose title is given above, is not the 

 production of some fortunate combination of circumstances, 

 but the slowly-matured fruit of steady and deep inquiry. — 

 Thus the author has succeeded in establishing two great na- 

 tural laws, which may have been anticipated by some, but 

 which have never been proved before. 1. That the animal 

 organization is perfect, in all its principal systems, to the 

 extreme limit of vision assisted by the most powerful micro- 

 scopes ; and, 2. TJiat the microscopic animalcula exercise a 

 very great and direct influence on inorganic nature. 



One of the inferences drawn from the first law is the great 

 improbability of these animalcula, as well as organic bodies 

 in general, being ever produced by spontaneous generation. 



In the Infusoria themselves Prof. Ehrenberg has either 

 confirmed or first established a considerable number of very 

 curious qualities and relations, which are highly interesting 

 in a physiological and other points of view, the most impor- 

 tant of which we briefly enumerate. 



1 The Infusoria (microscopic animalcula) as perfect Organisms; a glance 

 into the deeper organic life of Nature. With an Atlas of 64 coloured plates 

 after drawings executed by the author, &c. 



