IN TROD UCTION. 1 1 



has been observed that as the great whole is indissolubly 

 connected with its minutest parts, so the germination of 

 the minutest lichen, and the growth of the simplest moss, 

 is directly linked with the grandest astronomical pheno- 

 mena ; nor could the smallest fungus*" or conferva be 

 annihilated without destroying the equilibrium of the 

 universe. It is with organic nature as with the body 

 politic or the microcosm of the human frame, if " one 

 member suffer all the members suffer with it," and the 

 loss of one class or order would involve that of another, 

 till all would perish. Our comfort and health, nay our 

 very existence more or less immediately depend on the 

 useful functions which they perform. Before we can 

 have the wheat which forms our daily bread, or the grass 

 which yields us, through the instrumentality of our 

 herds, our daily supply of animal food, or the cotton and 

 lint which form our clothes, countless generations of 

 lichens and mosses must have been at work preparing 

 a soil for the growth of the plants which produce these 

 useful materials. And as on the dry land, so in the great 

 waters, this wonderful chain of connexion exists in all its 

 complexity. Before the reader can peruse these pages 

 by the light of the midnight lamp, or the gay party can 

 indulge their revels under the brilliant glare of sper- 

 maceti tapers, myriads of minute diatoms and confervse, 

 floating in the waters of the sea, must have formed a 

 basis of subsistence for the whales and seals whose oil 

 is employed for these purposes. Man's own structure is 

 nourished and built up by the particles which these 

 active plants have rescued from the mineral kingdom, 

 and which once circulated through their simple cells ; 



