Q 



42 COSMOS. 



manifold cuirenls and gyratory movements we add the plib 

 nomena of end osmosis, nutrition, and growth, we shall liave 

 some idea of those forces which are ever active amid the ap 

 parent repose of vegetable li!e. 



Since I attempted in a former work, Ansichten cler Natur 

 (Views of Nature), to delineate the universal diffusion of life 

 over the whole surface of the Earth, in the distribution of 

 organic forms, both with respect to elevation and depth, our 

 knowledge of this branch of science has been most remarkably 

 increased by Ehrenberg's brilliant discovery " on microscopic 

 life in the ocean, and in the ice of the polar regions" — a dis- 

 covery based, not on deductive conclusions, but on direct ob- 

 servation. The sphere of vitality, we might almost say, the 

 horizon of life, has been expanded before our ej^es. " Not 

 only in the polar regions is there an uninterrupted develop- 

 ment of active microscopic life, where larger animals can no 

 longer exist, but we find that the microscopic animals collect- 

 ed in the Antarctic expedition of Captain James Ross exhibit 

 a remarkable abundance of unknown and often most beautiful 

 forms. Even in the residuum obtained from the melted ice, 

 swimming about in round fragments in the latitude of 70° 10', 

 there were found upward of fifty species of silicious-shelled 

 Polygastria and Coscinodiscae with their green ovaries, and 

 therefore living and able to resist the extreme severity of the 

 void. In the Gulf of Erebus, sixty-eight silicious-shelled Poly- 

 gastria and Phytolitharia, and cnly one calcareous-shelled P^ly- 

 thalamia, were brought up by lead sunk to a depth of from 

 1242 to 1620 feet." 



The greater number of the oceanic microscopic forms hitli- 

 *"rto discovered have been silicious-shelled, although the anal- 

 ysis of sea water does not yield silica as the main constituent, 

 and it can only be imagined to exist in it in a state of suspen- 

 sion. It is not only at particular points in inland seas, or in 

 the vicinity of the land, that the ocean is densely inhabited 

 by living atoms, invisible to the naked eye, but samples of 



filament, vvliich commences an active spiral motion. The signification 

 of these organs is at present quite unknown ; they appear, from the 

 researches of Nageh, to resemble the cell mucilage, or proto-plasma, 

 in composition, and are developed from it. Schleiden regards them as 

 mere mucilaginous deposits, similar to those connected with the circu- 

 lation in cells, and he contends that the movement of these bodies in 

 water is analogous to the molecular motion of small particles of organic 

 and inorganic substances, and depends on mechanical causes."' — Onilinet 

 of Structural end Physiological Botany, by A. Henfrey, F.L.S., &c, 

 181G, p. 23.1— :rr 



