HECEEATIVE SCIENCE. 



145 



TYPICiVL FORMS OF EHIZOPODA. 



Amahiila. — Fig. 1, Amceba diffluens, contracted. Tigs. 3, 3, 4, the same, with the pseudopodia, more or less 



extended. 

 Gromiada.—Y\Q. 5, Gromia oviformis, with the pseiidopodia protruded. 

 Foraminifera. — Fig. 6, Jliliola, and Fig. 7, Eotalia Beccarii, with pseudopodia protruded. 



MICEOSCOPIC GEOLOGY. 



I. — EOCK-FOEMINO MICEOZOA — THE FOBAMINFEEA. 



Alt. around us is an invisible world, unseen 

 by our natural senses. Microscopic living 

 creatures and vegetable organisms swarm in 

 eartb, water, and sky ; but tbe eyes of the 

 many never behold tbem. Nothing is free 

 from them. We find them in the clearest 

 water, and in the strongest acids ; in the in- 

 ternal moisture of living plants, and in the 

 fluids of animal bodies. They are carried 

 about by the storms and winds; they fall 

 like powder on the decks of ships thousands 

 of miles away from land, and Ehrenberg has 

 found them even in meteoric dust. By their 

 immense numbers they colour large tracts of 

 water with remarkable hues. That beautifid 

 phenomenon, phosphoresence of the sea, is 

 due to the accumulation of myriads of mi- 

 nute jelly-globes ; while a cubic inch of 

 mouldering earth may contain upwards of 

 forty thousand tiny scavengers. 

 Vol, I.— No. 5. 



No one can think of them without rais- 

 ing his eyes ia adoration to their Maker; 

 and no one can see them and study them 

 without feeling how exquisite is the handi- 

 work of the Infinite Designer in these his 

 minutest creations, even as it is grand and 

 overwhelming in the vastness of the systems 

 of worlds rolling on in the boundless realms 

 of star-lit space. 



As it is now, so it has been, one might almost 

 say, from the beginning. At any rate, some 

 of the oldest strata of the paleozoic age — 

 the sUurian — present us with marine species 

 closely like the living forms of the same class 

 still swarming on our shores and in our seas. 

 The waters of the Niagara, for ten thousand 

 years, have plunged over a ledge of steep 

 clifi", even as they do now. In the superfi- 

 cial alluvial soil they have left the marks of 

 their headlong rushing as plainly as they 

 10 o 



