450 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



the most beautiful feathers, painted with the hues of the rainbow. Another 

 egg in the shape of a boot, produces one of the shortest lived, yet most 

 perfect insects known in the world — it lives twenty-four hours — and yet 

 God has endowed it with all the powers and organs necessary to discharge 

 the same functions, in the round of existence, as those whose lives are of 

 longer duration. Nothing can exceed the elegance and delicacy of its wing, 

 which is constructed of a membrane thinner than the finest imaginable gauze, 

 and is tinged with green, and otherwise beautifully ornamented. 



Immense clouded areas have been noticed from time immemorial by navi- 

 gators, in all oceans and seas, and in many instances at a great distance 

 from land, and they were unable to account for it, until the micrescope re- 

 vealed that minute marine infusoria imparted their color to the surrounding 

 water in which they existed. An area of twenty-two thousand square 

 miles in the Grreenland sea, presents to the eye of the mariner, a very deep 

 olive green color, caused by an infinite number of living animalcules, indi- 

 vidually imperceptible to the naked eye. Countless numbers of the huge 

 monsters of the deep, resort to this prolific feeding ground, where they find 

 an exliaustless supply of sustenance. On the east coast of the same sea, a 

 yellow color is imparted to the water, which on examination by the micro- 

 scope, proved to be lemon-colored animalcules, the largest of which was not 

 more than the two thousand five hundredth of an inch in length — a single 

 drop of water would contain twenty-five thousand of these little creatures. 

 On the coast of Chili a ship passed through large tracts of water pre- 

 senting to the eye a deep red color, which, on being submitted to a micro- 

 scope, proved to be animalcules a thousand one hundredth of an inch in 

 length, oval in form, and encircled by a ring. When caught and placed in 

 a vessel of water, they moved with such celerity against each other as to 

 burst and change the fluid to a muddy chocolate color. 



Human blood, when viewed under the microscope, exhibits very small 

 red globules, floating in a colorless liquid. It is of two colors in the ve- 

 nous and arterial systems, dark crimson in the former, and scarlet in the 

 latter. I have examined the blood of the horse, ox, hog, sheep, goose, 

 turkey, eel, perch, frog, and could distinguish a diff"erence between them 

 all, the corpuscles were much larger in the fish and frog than they were in 

 the man, ox and turkey. 



The ears of all the grasses and cereal grains are subject to diseases, 

 caused by the attacks of parasitic fungi, animalculaj and insects, because 

 they have a large quantity of nitrogenous matter in them. Smut in grain 

 is generated by a fungus which will entirely destroy it. Rust is formed by 

 a distinct species of fungi. Mildew is probably an animal production. 



I have made many Interesting microscopical investigations of blight in fruit 

 trees, which was invariably attributed by agriculturists to some mysterious at- 

 mospheric influence, an east wind, or thunder, because the discoloration of their 

 leaves, branches, and death, occurred almost simultaneously. The micro- 

 scope in all such cases has indicated to me innumerable insects as the cause. 

 The injury to wheat is generally attributed to the wheat midge ; whereas 



