Journal 



OF THE 



NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 



Vol. II. DECEMBER, 1886. No. 9. 



THE LIFE OF A DIATOM. 



BY PROF. SAMUEL LOCKWOOD, PH. D, 



{Read December 3^, 1886.) 



What word more mysterious than that little one, Life ? And 

 as for those other monosyllables, Light and Sound, the mind 

 must open widely to take in the conception of them required 

 by modern science. Forsooth, both light and sound are non- 

 entities, since each is but the manifestation of a form and 

 measure of motion. One is the experience of the beating upon 

 the optic nerve of the waves of the infinitely subtile ether, and 

 the other the experience of the billowy lashing of the greatly 

 grosser air upon the auditory nerve. Let the retina be injured, 

 and, though the ether waves still impinge, there is neither light 

 nor color. Similarly, sound waves make no impression on the 

 injured ear. And what may Madame Science not yet exact ? 

 We are bidden to regard Life as a nonentity — merely a mode 

 of motion of some odic or vital force. And this force — but no 

 one knows what that is. And yet what it does, or, more cor- 

 rectly, what comes of it, that appeals to our judgment : hence, 

 its manifestations may be intelligible, the object of experience, 

 and the subject of verification. And endowed with this force 

 is the atomy called a diatom. Of diatoms, there are many gen- 

 era. A very large genus, in the numbers of its species, is JVa- 

 vicula, whose maxima or giant species x's, Navicula dactylus ; and, 

 speaking roughly, if we could place side by side 8,000 of these, 

 the giants of the diatoms, the line so made would not exceed an 

 inch in length. Of the Lilliputians of this race, 12,000 placed 

 side by side might fail to make a line an inch in length. And 



