220 | Prof. Silliman’s Address before the 
ments to travel in ceaseless circles of organic revolution ; but 
vast numbers of them, escaping from the general ruin, are en- 
tombed without being destroyed—their elements are not sep- 
arated nor their members dissevered ; their forms, filled in with 
and accurately copied by mineral matter, are encased in solid stone, 
or frequently in metals, and thus unfold to our view—in the firm 
rocks of our plains, hills, and mountains—a lucid record of their 
chronology, equally incapable of being falsified or misinterpreted. _ 
Thus among the fossilized animals and plants, we discover 
forms both of colossal and minute dimensions; until the unas- 
sisted eye ceases to distinguish between the organized. being, 
and the mineral matter by which it is enveloped. And here it 
might well have been supposed, that we had reached the ulti- 
mate limit of optical research ; and little did our predecessors, of 
even ourselves, until very recently, imagine, that still another 
world lay concealed, in senseless mineral matter, and that it 
would in due time be fully disclosed to our inspection. Won- 
ders on wonders had, indeed, been revealed in former years, by 
the microscope, among the infinitesimal tribes—our living contem- 
poraries—that at this moment, in full activity, people the bodies 
of plants and animals, the waters, the atmosphere, and the wide 
earth. But these are only the successors of similar races now to 
a great extent extinct, for we are convinced by the evidence 
of our senses, that animalcules, often of inconceivable minute- 
hess, were not less numerous or. various, in earlier ages, than at 
present. roped 
The microscope, in the hands of Ehrenberg of Berlin and of 
his pupils and followers, and of other students of. microscopic 
analysis, (among whom Professor J. W. Bailey of West Point is 
the most distinguished in this country,) has not only passed in Te 
view the living infusorial animaleul, but has penetrated: the 
veil that concealed the fossilized races, whose existence had not 
: - even suspected. We are now enabled to see, not vaguely; 
Dut in accurate forms and with appropriate organization, the 
thousands of millions of animalcules, which, encased in. shiel 
of flint, peopled, in the dimensions of a single cubic inch, the 
popsthat posited the polishing slate (rotten stone) of Bilin, 
and the sediment of peat bogs; the bog iron ores are not less Te 
of. with similar-beings, clad in fe ginous envelopes, in coats 
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