208 Dr Gairdner"'s Analysis of 



forms among the lower animals find their prototypes among the 

 Infusoria." He stops, however, at these speculative ideas, for 

 in another place he denies the existence of a nervous system, 

 and even of an intestine, and carries out his analogy merely 

 with the aid of the external form, which we will afterwards find 

 to be so fugitive and changeable a character. 



The last additions of moment to Phytozoology, previous to 

 the publication of the labours of Dr Ehrenberg, are some addi- 

 tional observations by M. Losano, in the 30th volume of the 

 Turin Memoirs, where he has described and figured no less than 

 50 species of the genus Volvox, 77 of Cyclidium, 28 of Para- 

 mcBcium, and 26 of a new genus Oplarium. Unfortunately 

 the addition of so many species will be of little use to science, 

 since their characters are all founded on their changeable exter- 

 nal form. 



Such was the state of our knowledge with regard to the 

 structure and functions of infusory animals, previous to the 

 communication of Dr Ehrenberg'^s labours to the Berlin Aca- 

 demy; from which it will be seen, that we were only in pos- 

 session of a few scattered hints and isolated facts regarding the 

 existence or possible discovery of an internal organization, com- 

 municated by Mliller, Nitsch and Baer. For it is a question, 

 whether the systems of Gmelin, Lamarck, Cuvier, Goldfuss, 

 and Bory de St Vincent, founded as they were almost wholly on 

 the observations of others, did not tend rather to plunge the 

 subject into greater and greater obscurity. It is more than 

 twelve years since the Berlin professor first directed his atten- 

 tion to the structure of this order of organized beings. He 

 commenced his researches by ascertaining precisely the Miil- 

 lerian species which existed in the pools and stagnant waters in 

 the Thiergarten, and other places in the vicinity of the Prussian 

 metropolis. On his journey with Dr Hemprich into Egypt, 

 Libya, and Arabia, he pursued his inquiries into the forms 

 which characterize these burning plains, with a perseverance 

 which did not fail of being rewarded with some extremely interest- 

 ing views, and have laid the foundation already for a geographical 

 distribution of these microscopic forms. On his return to Ber- 

 lin from his tropical expedition, he repeated his former obser- 



