286 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



The Tardigrades, and those eel-like creatures which 

 are found in the same locality with the Kotifers, furnished 

 Spallanzani with phenomena entirely similar to those of 

 which I have been speaking. 



These results, which were confirmed in the last 

 century, have been generally received as exact, and were 

 explained by the extreme simplicity of organisation, 

 which was supposed to be the attribute of all these 

 animals. But after Ehrenberg* showed that a rela- 

 tively high organisation was in no way incompatible 

 with microscopical dimensions, and when he published 



* Ehrenberg, a German by birth, a corresponding member of our 

 Institute, and perpetual secretary to the Academy of Sciences at 

 Berlin, has perhaps exercised a greater and more useful influence 

 than any other living naturalist. He was probably the first in 

 Germany who attacked the basis of that obscure system of those 

 philosophers of nature, which had predominated so much amongst 

 Germans ; and he has great merit for having directed the zoological 

 and physiological sciences in the path of observation and experiment. 

 Ehrenberg is especially celebrated for his researches on the smallest 

 forms of organic life — observations which have justly placed him in 

 the first rank of modern micrographers. His discoveries on the 

 organisation of the Infusoria and Rotifera gave a new impulse to 

 this department of science, which had not advanced since the times 

 of Leuwenhoeck and O. F. Miiller. His researches on Fossil 

 Infusoria prove that these infinitely small beings have left much 

 more considerable traces in the geological strata of the globe than 

 even mastodons or elephants. Finally, his memoirs on the organic 

 structure of some of the lower animals of larger size, and amongst 

 others the Medusae, have served as the starting point from whence 

 have emanated numerous researches which are still being prose- 

 cuted, and which have completely changed the ideas that had been 

 entertained of fully the half of the animal creation. Among the 

 numerous writings of Ehrenberg, we may especially cite his great 

 works on the Infusoria, entitled Die Infusions- Thierchen als 

 volkommene Organismen and Mikroyeologie, as well as his memoirs 

 on the organisation of the Acalephse, and all his publications on 

 Fossil Infusoria. 



