144 ANniALCULAE LIFE. 



Animalcula/T' Life. 



iNature has no imit of magnitude by which she measures her 

 works. Man takes his standards of dimension from himself. 

 The hair's breadth was his minimum until the microscope told 

 him that there are animated creatures to which one of the hairs 

 of his head is a larger cyhnder than is the trunk of the giant 

 Cahfornia sequoia to him. He borrows his inch from the breadth 

 of his thumb, his palm and span from the width of his hand and 

 the spread of his fingers, his foot from the length of the organ 

 so named ; his cubit is the distance from the tip of his middle 

 finger to his elbow, and his fathom is the space he can measure 

 with his outstretched arms.* To a being who instinctiYclj" finds 

 the standard of all magnitudes in his own material frame, all 

 objects exceeding his own dimensions are absolutely great ; all 

 falling short of them, absolutely small. Hence we habitually re- 

 gard the whale and the elephant as essentially large and therefore 

 important creatures, the animalcule as an essentially small and 

 therefore unimportant organism. But no geological formation 

 owes its origin to the labors or the remains of the huge mammal, 

 while the animalcule composes, or has furnished, the substance 

 of strata thousands of feet in thickness, and extending, in un- 



* The French metrical system seems destined to be adopted throughout the 

 civilized world. It is indeed recommended by great advantages, but it is very 

 doubtful whether they are not more than counterbalanced by the selection of 

 too large a unit of measure, and by the inherent intractability of all decimal 

 systems with reference to fractional divisions. The experience of the whole 

 world has established the superior convenience of a smaller unit, such as the 

 braccio, the cubit, the foot, and the palm or span, and in practical life every 

 man finds that he has much more frequent occasion to use a fraction than a 

 multiple of the metre. Of course, he must constantly employ numbers ex- 

 pressive of several centimetres or millimetres instead of the name of a single 

 smaller unit than the metre. Besides, the metre is not divisible into twelfths, 

 eighths, sixths, or thirds, or the multiples of any of these proportions, two of 

 which at least — the eighth and the third — are of as frequent use as any other 

 fractions. The adoption of a. fourth of the earth's circumference as a base 

 for the new measures was itself a departure from the decimal system. Had 

 the Commissioners taken the eniue circumference as a base, and divided it 

 into 100,000,000 instead of 10,000,000 parts, we should have had a unit of 

 about sixteen inches, which, as a compromise between the foot and the cubit, 

 would have been much better adapted to universal use than so large a unit as 

 the metre. 



