REVIEWS. 



A SYNOPSIS OF THE BRITISH DIATOMACE^ ; with Remarks on their 

 Structure, Functions, and Distribution ; and Instructions for Collecting 

 and Preserving Specimens. Vol. I., with 31 Plates By the Rev. 

 William Smith, F.L.S. The Plates by Tuffen West. London. 1853. 

 Price 1 Is. 



ABOUT seventeen years ago, an expensive and elaborately-illustrated folio 

 work was published in Germany. Its author was Christian Gottfried 

 Chrenberg, of Berlin, who had been already, by common consent, placed 

 at the head of the investigators of the minutest forms of animal life, and 

 whose fame as a microscopist had extended throughout Europe. 



We shall not stop to criticise the views contained in the " Infusions- 

 thierchen." Its author had a vast field before him, hitherto almost totally 

 untrodden ; for, however popular may have been the study of those 

 infinitesimal beings which swarm in infusions of organic substances, and 

 however much the faculty of wonder had been fed by the early revelations 

 of the microscope, yet the whole attention of the older observers of these 

 living atoms was directed to their external forms and habits, while of their 

 internal structure there was, literally, almost nothing known till Ehrenberg 

 engaged in their investigation. Ehrenberg had, therefore, nothing to 

 fall back upon he had no clue left by previous explorers to guide him 

 through the untrodden paths of the vast region on which he had entered. 

 Can it be any wonder, then, that he frequently went astray, and that sub- 

 sequent researches, with all the advantages derivable from his previous 

 labours, and from the unequalled excellence of more modern microscopes, 

 should have shown the untenableness of many of his positions, and have 

 drawn forth from the territory on which he first planted the standard of 

 scientific discovery new treasures, not even dreamt of by its own Co- 

 lumbus ? 



One great revolution which modern researches has effected in that im- 

 mense tribe of organisms associated by Ehrenberg under the common 

 name of " Animalcules of Infusion" is, the total abstraction from it of a 

 very numerous class of forms, and the allocation of this class to the vege- 

 table kingdom as its rightful territory. 



Among the beings which have been thus dissociated from the true 

 Infusorial Animalcules are a set of microscopic organisms, of very various 

 form, consisting essentially of a delicate vegetable cell, enclosed in a little 



VOL. II. C 



