1 84 ROMANCE OF LOW LIFE AMONGST PLANTS. 



Moreover, the storm winds and sirocco are found to 

 afford the same species of organisms. 



Ehrenberg repeats the opinion that these phe- 

 nomena are not to be traced to mineral material 

 from the earth's surface, nor to revolving masses of 

 dust material in space, nor to atmospheric currents 

 simply ; but to some general law connected with the 

 earth's atmosphere, according to which there is a self- 

 development within it of living organisms. 



Tables are added by Ehrenberg to his work on this 

 subject, containing an enumeration of the species and 

 their occurrence in the different specimens examined. 



Chladni has estimated that for the single dust 

 shower of Lyons in 1846, the material that fell was 

 full 7200 hundredweight. The Cape Verde shower 

 had a breadth, according to Darwin, of more than 

 1600 miles, and according to Tuckey of 1800 miles, 

 and extended 600 to Soo miles, or even 1000 miles 

 from the African Coast. This gives an area of 

 960,000 to 1,280,000, or from 1,684,000 to 1,854,000 

 square miles. 



The surface of Italy is about 90,000 square miles ; 

 that of Sicily 10,000 square miles, making together 

 100,000. A single dust shower, covering both coun- 

 tries, like that of 1803, to the extent of that of Lyons 

 in 1846, would deposit 112,800 hundredweight of dust 

 in a single day. With such facts before us, Ehren- 

 berg asks, how many thousand millions of hundred- 

 weight of microscopic organisms have reached the 

 earth since the period of Homer, the time of our 

 earliest record of such events ? He adds, " I cannot 

 longer doubt that there are relations according to 



