Il8 ROMANCE OF LOW LIFE AMONGST PLANTS. 



ance of myriads of a minute green alga, of which not 

 less than three hundred could be contained in a 

 single drop of water on the head of a pin.^ 



Professor Dickie has placed on record his experi- 

 ences of a similar phenomenon in Scotland, in which 

 almost the same organisms were concerned. He 

 writes, " For some years back excursions have been 

 made with the students of my botanical class to a 

 loch on the estate of Parkhill, about four miles north- 

 west from Aberdeen. The sheet of water in question 

 is about a quarter of a mile in its greatest length ; 

 on almost all sides surrounded by extensive deposits 

 of peat, with the soluble matter of which a great pro- 

 portion of the water passing into the loch is im- 

 pregnated. The locality was. generally visited in the 

 beginning of July. Nothing peculiar had ever been 

 observed till the summer of 1846, when my attention 

 was arrested by a peculiar appearance of the water, 

 especially near the edge, but extending also some 

 distance into the loch. Numerous minute bodies, 

 with a spherical outline, and varying in size from 

 one twenty-fourth to one-twelfth of an inch in 

 diameter, were seen floating at different depths, and 

 giving the water a peculiar appearance. In some 

 places they were very densely congregated, especially 

 in small creeks at the edge of the loch. A quantity 

 was collected by filtration through a piece of cloth, 

 and, on examination by. the microscope, there could 

 be no doubt that the production was of a vegetable 



» "The Breaking of the Meres," by W, Phillips, in Transactions of 

 Shropshire Natural History Society, Grevillca, 18S0, p. 4 ; 1SS2, 

 p. III. 



