INFUSORIAL ANIMALS. 5 
On 
bringing these minute creatures into a comparison with the rumi- 
nants. Ehrenberg asserts that he has seen infusoria provided with 
200 stomachs! What appetites they must have! To study the 
organs of these microscopic creatures it is necessary to colour the 
liquid in which they exist with carmine or indigo. Then place a 
drop of this coloured water on a slip glass, and near to it a drop of 
clean water. Now cause the two drops to communicate at one point 
with a needle. The animalcules approach the coloured drop and 
imbibe the molecules of carmine, thus affording the observer the 
MONADS. AN INFUSORE MAGNIFIED, 
(Paramectum bursaria.) 
opportunity of watching the progress of the particle through the 
system of the creature. 
The difficulties which lay in the way of this delicate obser- 
vation, together with the strong imagination of many of the ob- 
servers, for a long while prevented any reliable information about 
them to be gathered. Leuwenhoeck, who first noticed the existence 
of these infusoria in 1676, was so elated with his discovery, and so 
certain of the wonderful power of the microscope which he had 
made, that he always supposed he saw more than he really did. 
He was enraptured with the complexity and the perfection of these 
microscopical beings, and wished to suppose their internal organism 
was complete, with stomach, alimentary canal, vessels, nerves, and 
muscles. Jablot even outstripped his predecessor. He saw among 
