10 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 



with the globe itself. But with the enlargement and culti- 

 vation of his mental powers, he takes a more just, compre- 

 hensive, and enlightened view of the wonderful scheme of 

 creation, and while in his ignorance he imagined that the 

 duration of the globe was to be measured by his own brief 

 span, and arrogantly deemed himself alone the object of the 

 Almighty's care, and that all things were created for his 

 pleasure and necessities, he now feels his dependence, enter- 

 tains more correct ideas of the mercy, wisdom, and good- 

 ness of his Creator ; and while exercising his high privilege 

 of being alone capable of contemplating and understanding 

 the wonders of the natural world, he learns the most im- 

 portant of all lessons to doubt the evidence of his own 

 senses until confirmed by patient and cautious investiga- 

 tions. 



" Where is the dust that has not been alive ?" 



The remains of organic existence, found in the median 

 and other tartiaries, conduct us from the colossal and impo- 

 sing to the minute and microscopic j for beds occur entirely 

 composed of the fossil relics of animalculites those in- 

 finitesimal forms now present in our lakes, rivers, and 

 streams, invisible to the unassisted sight, whose perfect or- 

 ganization places them among the wonders of the creation. 

 They were formerly supposed to be little more than mere 

 particles of matter endowed with vitality ; but Ehrenberg 

 has discovered in them an apparatus of muscles, intestines, 

 teeth, different kinds of glands, eyes, nerves, and organs of 

 reproduction. Yet some of the smallest are not more than 

 the 24,000th of an inch in diameter, the thickness of the 

 skin of their stomachs not more than the 50,000,000th part 

 of an inch, a single drop of water having been estimated 

 sometimes actually to contain 500,000,000 individuals. 

 Not less astonishing is their power of multiplication, an in- 

 dividual of one species increasing in ten days to 1,000,000 



