Scientific hitelligence. — Zoology. 195 



llieir substance a mucosity, which forms itself into a membrane, 

 and entirely envelopes them *. M. Bory de St Vincent has con- 

 tinued to occupy himself with these microscopic transformations, 

 having in view to penetrate to the first combinations of matter 

 to which these corpuscules seem so near. Observing the appear- 

 ances successively presented in water exposed to light, he thought 

 he saw, for the first time, matter assume the aspect of a simple 

 mucosity, without colour or form. If the water contains any 

 animal substance, it produces a pellicle of this mucosity at its 

 surface, then becomes turbid, and discloses an infinity of living 

 atoms, if we may so call those monads, which, after being mag- 

 nified a thousand times, are not so large as the point of a nee- 

 dle, and which yet move in all directions, with prodigious velo- 

 city. This is what M. Bory names matter in the living state. 

 When the water is exposed to the air and light, there quickly 

 forms what is named the green matter of Priestley, which many 

 observers have supposed to be the first state of certain confervae, 

 or plants of a like nature. M. Bory thinks that it is a combi- 

 nation of a more general form, and only susceptible of entering 

 into the composition of these plants, as well as of the animal- 

 cules which issue from it, and which produce them. He names 

 this combination matter in the vegetative state. It is by it that 

 the infusory animals are rendered green. Those which colour 

 oysters, according to M. Gaillon's observations, produce this ef- 

 fect, as M. Bory says, only because they are themselves colour- 

 ed by the green matter. It colours,* in the same manner, the 

 water and the shells of these oysters ; and it would not be im- 

 possible to find some tinged directly by this matter, without any 

 animalcules having penetrated into them. It is so difficult to 

 render observations of this kind complete, and one may always 

 so easily suppose an anterior state, still more attenuated, and 

 which may have escaped every microscope, or invisible germs, 

 which the necessity of the concurrence of air prevents from se- 

 parating, that many philosophers will probably refuse to admit 



• M. INIertens, a botanist of Bremen, has observed similar facts on the C(w- 

 ferva mutabilis. On the 3d August, he says, it was in its vegetable state ; on 

 the 6th it resolved itself into molecules possessed of mobility ; on the Cth some 

 of these molecules united into simple articulations ; and, on the 11th, it was 

 restored to its original form. 



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