MICROSCOPIC STUDY OF ANIMALCULES. 49 



the Animal scale most strangely reversed ; being at once de- 

 graded from a position but little removed from Vertebrated ani- 

 mals, to a level in some respects even lower than that of the 

 ordinary Animalcules. 



But even when Prof. Ehrenberg's class of Polygastrica has 

 been thus reduced, by the removal of those forms which are true 

 Plants, and by the detachment of such as belong to the Ehizopod 

 group, we find that our knowledge of its real nature is almost 

 wholly to be gained; since little else has yet been accomplished than 

 a description of a multitude of forms, of whose history as living 

 beings scarcely anything else is known, than that they take food 

 into the interior of their bodies by means of an oral orifice, that 

 they digest this food and appropriate it to their own growth, 

 and that they multiply themselves by binary subdivision. Now 

 there is a very strong analogical probability, that many even of 

 the most dissimilar forms of these Animalcules will prove to be 

 different states of one and the same ; for their multiplication by 

 binary subdivision being not a true generative process, but being 

 merely (so to speak) the growth of the individual, we may be al- 

 most certain that sooner or later a new phase will present itself, 

 consisting in the evolution of proper sexual bodies, which will 

 perform a true generative act, the products of which may be 

 very probably quite different from the forms we are accustomed 

 to regard as peculiar to each species. The attention of several 

 eminent Microscopists at the present time is strongly fixed upon 

 this part of the inquiry ; which can only be efficiently prosecuted, 

 by limiting the range of observation for a time to a small number 

 of forms, and pursuing these through all the phases of their ex- 

 istence. 



Among the most important of Prof. Ehrenberg's unquestioned 

 discoveries, we are undoubtedly to place that of the compara- 

 tively high organization of the Rotifera, or Wheel- Animalcules 

 and their allies ; for which, though previously confounded with 

 a similar Infusoria, he asserted and vindicated a claim to a far 

 more elevated rank. For although in this instance, too, some of 

 his descriptions have been shown to be incorrect, and many of 

 his inferences to be erroneous, and although subsequent observ- 

 ers are not agreed among themselves as to many important par- 

 ticulars, yet all assent to the general accuracy of Prof. Ehrenberg's 

 statements, and recognize the title of the Rotifera to a place not 

 far removed from that of the Vermiform tribes. A parallel dis- 

 covery was made about the same time by MM. Audouin and 

 Milne Edwards, in regard to the JFlustrce and their allies, which 

 had previously ranked among those flexible Zoophytes popularly 

 known as " corallines," and are often scarcely to be distinguished 

 from them in mode of growth or general aspect j 1 but which 



1 "You go down," says Mr. Kingsley, " to any shore after a gale of wind, and pick 

 up a few delicate little sea-ferns. You have two in your hand (Sertularia operculata 

 and Gemellaria loriculata), which probably look to you, even under a good pocket mag- 

 nifier, identical or nearly so. But you are told, to your surprise, that however like the 



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