

INFUSORIA. 185 



their numbers, derived from organic matter 

 in the food : so that the body of man himself 

 would be nothing more than a vast congregation 

 of monads ! 



This bold and fanciful hypothesis, devised by 

 Buffon, and recommended by its seductive ap- 

 pearance of simplicity, as well as by the glow- 

 ing style and brilliant imagination of its author, 

 has had many zealous partisans. The new 

 world, which was disclosed to the wondering 

 eyes of naturalists by the microscope, abounding 

 in objects and in phenomena of which no con- 

 ception could have been formed previously to 

 the invention of that instrument, was peculiarly 

 calculated to excite curiosity, and to inspire the 

 hope of its revealing the secret of the living prin- 

 ciple in the arrangement of the atoms of organic 

 bodies. During the greater part of the last cen- 

 tury, infusory animalcules were the subject of 

 frequent and laborious microscopical research, 

 and gave rise to endless conjecture and specula- 

 tion as to their origin, their vitality, and their 

 functions in the economy of nature. Notwith- 

 standing their minuteness, considerable differ- 

 ences of organization were perceived to exist 

 among them : but many naturalists still clung to 

 the idea that monads, the most diminutive of the 

 tribe, and whose very presence can be detected 

 only by the application of the highest magni- 

 fying powers, are homogeneous globules of living 



