THE PA GE OF NA T URE. ] 8 1 



those of all other plants, that the zoologist and botanist 

 are not yet agreed as to which kingdom of nature the 

 animal or the vegetable they ought to be referred ; 

 and, accordingly, they have occasionally been classed and 

 figured as plants by one naturalist, and as animals by 

 another. Ehrenberg, the great Prussian naturalist, whose 

 microscopic researches have laid open to us a new and 

 strange world of minute organic existence, and to whose 

 untiring industry and patience we are indebted for the 

 discovery of most of the wonderful atomies under con- 

 sideration, was from the very first firmly convinced of 

 their animal nature ; and the credit attached in this 

 country to his notions, had the effect of turning away 

 the attention of botanists from them ; while the zoolo- 

 gists rejected them from their systems as suspicious and 

 anomalous objects ; and the mere microscopist regarded 

 them simply as new and strange forms of life, with the 

 contemplation of whose beautiful structure he could agree- 

 ably while away a leisure hour. Nor need we wonder 

 at this perplexity, for even at the present day, when the 

 improvement of the microscope has placed peculiar struc- 

 tures, before quite invisible, within view of the observer, 

 and given him the utmost clearness and definition of 

 outline, many objects remain still undecided ; and much 

 has yet to be done before we can come to a satisfactory 

 conclusion regarding them, or even venture to pronounce 

 an opinion upon them at all. In external form the 

 diatoms present remarkable similarities to many species 

 of infusorial animalcules, and spontaneous movements 

 long thought peculiar to the animal kingdom, they like- 

 wise exhibit. Even chemical analysis itself, that ulti- 



