204 Dr Gairdner's Analysis of 



no fixed idea attached to the term an infusory animal ; and th« 

 microscope was more devoted to the purposes of amusement or 

 astonishment, than to the prosecution of a connected series of 

 inquiries into the mysteries of organic forms. We can hai'dly 

 except from this censure the laborious investigations on seminal 

 animalcules, which occupied the attention of the learned world 

 for so long a time after the discovery of this instrument. They 

 were certainly instituted with the laudable view of throwing 

 some light upon the mysterious process of generation, but were 

 almost invariably preceded, accompanied, and ended in nothing 

 else than a few fanciful microcosmic views, which ministered to the 

 superstitious physiology of the age. Those who limited their in- 

 quiries more strictly to those animals which people the fresh and 

 salt waters on the surface of the globe, did not sufficiently dis- 

 tinguish between those which are proper to these fluids, and the 

 larvae of insects and Crustacea, in their early stages of develop- 

 ment. We cannot, therefore, be surprised, when they ascribe 

 to them a mouth, ovaria, eyes, &c. 



With Otto Frederick Miiller, who died in the year 1785, com- 

 mences a second epoch in tliis department of zoology, which has 

 scarcely advanced a single step beyond the point to which it 

 was at once carried by its founder, notwithstanding the progres- 

 sive improvements and extension of the microscope. Specula- 

 tions and systems have been founded on his observations ; but 

 very few additional facts were added to those which he first dis- 

 closed, lie was the first who separated them as a distinct group 

 from all other animal existences ; and, in his work entitled Ani- 

 maJia Infusoria., c^r., has described and figured, with much mi- 

 nuteness, no less than 078 species. He affords another example, 

 to the many on record, of a great man advancing to the very 

 threshold of a grand discovery, and proceeding no farther. He 

 was not ignorant of the importance of an attention to the inter- 

 nal organization of these animals, and even describes the mouth, 

 digestive and generative apparatus of many, and even their eyes. 

 Although he went so far as even to separate, under the title of 

 Bidlaria, those who possessed such an internal structure, from 

 the Irifusoria properly so called, in which there were no traces 

 of organization ; vet he has not the courage to found on this his 



