28 GENERAL HISTORY OF 



assertion led to an examination, subsequently, of the creatures, by 

 M. Audouin, who ascertained them to be a species of the Entomostraca, 

 and who did not hesitate to pronounce the method, by which they 

 were said to have been produced, to be fallacious. 



The most ingenious experiment on the imaginary production of 

 Infusoria, is that of Professor Bonsdorff, which he communicated to 

 the German JSTatiu^alists' Association in 1834. The following is 

 Ehi'enberg's account of it : — " If a solution of chloride of aluminimi 

 be ch'opped into a solution of potassa, by the attenuate precipitation 

 and solution of the alimiinum in the excess of alkali, an appeai-ance 

 will be given to the di'op of aluminated matter, by the chemical 

 changes and reactions which take place, as if the Amoeba diffluens 

 (see description. Part III.) were actually present, both as to its form 

 and evolutions, and it ^vill seem to be alive. Such appearance is 

 considered, by its able discoverer, as bearing the same relationshiii to 

 the real animalcule, as a doU or a figiu'e, moved by mechanism, does to 

 a living cliild." 



Section X. — On the Evolution of Lujlit hj Infusoria. — Several small 

 animals are known to emit light, apparently j^hosphorescent, as the 

 female glow-worm, and some species of the Myriapoda, which I have 

 frequently noticed in the gravel walks of a garden, on a dark 

 autumnal evening. This emission of light, whether in the above- 

 named animals, or in Infusoria, is evidently the result of a vital 

 process. In the latter class of creatures, it seems like a single spark, 

 of a moment's duration, but capable of being repeated at short 

 intervals. That this light is electi-ical, analogy would lead us to 

 infer ; as experiments made upon larger creatures have proved it to 

 be such with them. 



The phosphorescence of the sea is not unfrequently due, in a great 

 measure, to Infusoria, chiefly belonging to the family Cyclidina ; and 

 when we take into consideration the minuteness of these creatures, 

 the largest not exceeding the 100th part of an inch, whilst some of 

 them are scarcely one-twelfth of that size, our ideas of computation 

 are too limited to foi-m any just notion of the number which some- 

 times illuminates many miles in extent of the ocean's surface. 



Ehrenberg found, at Wismar on the Baltic, that the Peridinium 

 tripos and P. fnscus belonged to the phosphorescent Infusoria, and 



