164 SKETCH or tiik infusoria 



branch of inicroscopic ])aleontology. It has been well remarked 

 thai the microscope is now as important an instrmnent for the 

 <reologist as the hammer; and indeed the results obtained by 

 microscopic observation of coal, fossil wood, teeth, polythalamia, 

 and infusoria, prove the truth of this remark. The question cui 

 bono ? to what useful end are your pursuits ? can now be tri- 

 umphantly answered by the lover of microscopic research ; but 

 happily, to use the words of the Hon. W. H. Harvey,* the class 

 who now ask this question to naturalists "is neither so numerous 

 or respectable as it was thirty years ago ; it is becoming every 

 day less so, and will soon be confined to the ignorant and the 

 gensual.'' In the language of another distinguished philosopher,! 

 '' the time is past when the utility or dignity of such pursuits can 

 be affected by a sneer at the littleness of their objects, as they 

 seem little in the eyes of the indifferent and the ignorant. Every 

 thing is gi-eat or small only by comparison ; the telescope teaches 

 us that the world is but an atom, and none know better than mi- 

 croscopical observers that every atom is a world." 



The Phenomena of Drift, or Glacio-Aqueous Action in 

 North America, between the Tertiary and Alluvial 

 Periods. By Edward Hitchcock, LL. D., Professor of 

 Chemistry and Natural History in Amherst CoUeg-e, Massa- 

 chusetts. 



Although the leading facts respecting the Drift, or Diluvium, 

 of this country, have long ago been given to the world by our 

 geologists, yet the new light which the recent labors of such men 

 as Charpentier, Agassiz, Lyell, Buckland, and Murchison, on the 

 other side of the Atlantic, have shed on the subject, will enable 

 us, I fancy, to classify the phenomena more accurately, and per- 



* Manual of British Alga>, by tlie Hon. ^\'illiam llcnry Ilarvcy. 



t Richard Owen, Esq. Address before the IMicroscopic Society of London, 1S41. 



