I 



THEIR LIFE AND AFFINITY. 233 



sistency, it appears to have become a confused mass, or an indurated 

 green mucus. When the mass is broken and observed through a good 

 microscope, the original green corpuscles appear again, but changed in 

 form, enveloped in a slimy matter, and interwoven with small transpa- 

 rent threads resembling slender colourless glass tubes, and show irregular 

 yet visible movements. They approach each other, return again to 

 their former position, become entangled with each other, and again dis- 

 entangle themselves. If observed at the instant when such movements 

 occur with the greatest energy, these little filaments have all the appear- 

 ance of diminutive eels ; in fact they are in some degree similar to the 

 small vermiculations observed in vinegar. We may often discover in 

 them even peristaltic motions. The white colour and the motion of these 

 filaments last but a certain time. After a few weeks more, the crust 

 becomes more solid, uneven, and raised here and there into irregular 

 protuberances. The threads (or filaments) become more distinct ; they 

 are green, and scattered about without order, chiefly on the most pro- 

 minent part of the crust, without however rising over its surface, which 

 remains smooth and rather hard to the touch. The crust itself presents 

 scarcely any traces of the original animalcules. 



" If the crust be left undisturbed, and the water be now and then, 

 but seldom, renewed, the unevennesses of the crust increase and rise in 

 a pyramidal form. As soon as the pyramids are formed, the green 

 threads, winding irregularly through the unevennesses of the green 

 crust, rise also, become developed, and dispose themselves along the 

 pyramidal bodies, toward the upper parts of which they become par- 

 ticularly visible ; the rest is of a gelatinous substance, of a sufficient 

 consistence to maintain its form as long as it remains under water. If 

 these productions belong to the class of zoophytes, they must be ranked 

 among the Tremellae." 



Some have indeed denied the actual production of organized from 

 unorganized matter, since distilled water over quicksilver does not pro- 

 duce any green matter. But in the first place it is not easy to see why 

 a metamorphosis should not be regarded as such because it occurs only 

 under certain given circumstances ; in the second place, it is also very 

 possible that in a process so little favoured even by pure water, the 

 quicksilver, on account of its property of counteracting production (a 

 property which renders it so useful as medicine), may destroy or pre- 

 vent the infusorial fermentation, as it has been called. 



We think therefore that we are not in error when (combining the 

 consideration of these important changes with our general inquiries 

 into unorganized matter,) we recur to the proposition we have before 

 laid down, viz. tliat the multiplicity of the phaenomena of nature 

 rests upon one tmity ; that nature therefore nowhere presents cither an 

 absolute diffenMice (for such changes would then be inexplicable), or 

 .an absolute identity ; and consequently, if we give the name of sub- 



