228 PHYSIOGNOMY OP PLANTS. 



animalculge, are carried up by the winds from the surface of evapo- 

 rating waters. These minute creatures, motionless and apparently 

 dead, are borne to and fro in the air until the falling dews bring 

 them back to the surface of the earth, dissolve the film or envelop 

 which encloses their transparent rotating bodies, ( 3 ) and, probably 

 by means of the oxygen which all waters contain, breathe new irri- 

 tability into their dormant organs. 



According to Ehrenberg's brilliant discovery, the yellow sand or 

 dust which falls like rain on the Atlantic near the Cape de Verde 

 Islands, and is occasionally carried even to Italy and Middle Europe, 

 consists of a multitude of silicious-shelled microscopic animals. 

 Perhaps many of them float for years in the upper strata of the 

 atmosphere, until they are brought down by vertical currents or in 

 accompaniment with the superior current of the trade-winds, still 

 susceptible of revivification, and multiplying their species by spon- 

 taneous division in conformity with the particular laws of their 

 organization. 



But, besides creatures fully formed, the atmosphere contains in- 

 numerable germs of future life, such as the eggs of insects and the 

 seeds of plants, the latter provided with light hairy or feathery 

 appendages, by means of which they are wafted through the air 

 during long autumnal wanderings. Even the fertilizing dust or 

 pollen from the anthers of the male flowers, in species in which the 

 sexes are separated, is carried over land and sea, by winds and by 

 the agency of winged insects, ( 4 ) to the solitary female plant on 

 other shores. Thus, wherever the glance of the inquirer into 

 Nature penetrates, he sees the continual dissemination of life, either 

 fully formed or in the germ. 



If the aerial ocean in which we are submerged, and above the 

 surface of which we cannot rise, be indispensable to the existence of 

 organized beings, they also require a more substantial aliment, 

 which they can find only at the bottom of this gaseous ocean. This 

 bottom is of two kinds; the smaller portion consisting of dry land 

 in immediate contact with the external atmosphere, and the larger 

 portion consisting of water, which may perhaps have been formed 

 thousands of years ago by electric agencies from gaseous substances, 

 and which is now incessantly undergoing decomposition in the labor- 



