INFUSORIAL ANIMALS. 53 
which we may call small or trivial, which does not bear witness 
to the grandeur and unapproached excellence of the Almighty 
Creator.” 
The infusorial animalcules are so minute that a single drop of 
water may contain many millions of them. They exist in all 
waters, the fresh as well as salt, the cold as well as hot. The great 
SOLAR MICROSCOPE, 
rivers teem vast quantities of them hourly into the ocean. The 
Ganges, in the course of one year, transports a mass of invisible in- 
fusoria equal in volume to six or eight of the great pyramids of 
Egypt. Among these animalcules, according to Ehrenberg, may be 
counted seventy-one different species. The water brought up from 
a depth of 21,600 feet between the Philippine and Marianne Islands, 
was found to contain 116 species. In the Arctic regions, where 
beings of a higher organisation cannot exist, the infusoria are still 
met with in myriads. Those which were observed in the Antarctic 
seas during the voyages of Captain Sir James Ross, offer a richness 
of organisation often accompanied by elegance of form quite 
unknown in more northern regions. In the residuum of the 
blocks of ice floating about in latitude 78° 10, nearly fifty dif- 
ferent species were found. At a depth of the sea which exceeds 
the height of the loftiest mountain, Humboldt asserts that each bed 
of water is animated by an innumerable phalanx of inhabitants 
