ORGANIC LIFE. 



105 



eternal night of the depths of ocean, animal life 

 especially prevails, whilst upon continents, ve- 

 getable life, which requires the periodic stimu- 

 lus of the sun's rays, is the more extensively 

 diffused. Considered with reference to mass, 

 the vegetable far exceeds the animal world on 

 the face of the globe. What is the number of 

 great cetaceans and pachydermatous tribes, in 

 comparison with the bulk of the thick-set trunks 

 of lofty trees, from eight to twelve feet in di- 

 ameter, that grow in the forests of the tropical 

 zone of South America, between the Orinoco, 

 the Amazon's River, and the Rio de Madeira ! 

 Even allowing the character of the several 

 countries of the earth to depend on the aspect 

 of external phenomena at large ; if the outline 

 of mountains, the physiognomy of plants ana 

 animals, the blue of the sky, the contour of the 

 clouds, and the transparency of the atmosphere 

 produce the general impression, still it is not 

 to be denied that the principal element in this 

 impression is the vegetable covering of the sur 

 face. The animal kingdom wants mass, and 

 the motions of individuals withdraw them fre- 

 quently from our sight. The vegetable world 

 works upon our imagination by the mere force 

 of quantity ; its mass indicates its age ; and in 

 vegetables alone are age and the expression of 

 inherent power of renovation associated(^*2). 

 In the animal kingdom — and this consideration 

 is also the result of Ehrenberg's discoveries — 

 it is precisely the life that we are wont to des- 

 ignate as the smallest in point of room, which 

 by its subdivision and rapid increase(^^^) pre- 

 sents the most remarkable relations in respect 

 of mass. The smallest of the Infusoria, the 

 Monadae, only obtain a diameter of g^^^^^h of a 

 line, yet do these silicious-shelled organisms, 

 in moist countries, compose, by their accumu- 

 lation, subterraneous strata several fathoms in 

 thickness. 



The impression of an all-animated nature, so 

 exciting and so salutary *o feeling man, belongs 

 to every zone ; but it is most powerfully pro- 

 duced towards the equator, in the peculiar zone 

 of the palms, the bamboos, and the arborescent 

 ferns — in regions where, from sea shores cov- 

 ered with molluscs and corals, the ground rises 

 in stages to the line of eternal snow, and the 

 relations of plants and animals, in respect of 

 local position, embrace almost every height and 

 every depth. Organic forms even descend into 

 the interior of the earth, and occur not merely 

 in places where, through the operations of the 

 miner, great excavations have been made ; in 

 natural cavities, also, which have been opened 

 for the first time by blasting, and to which me- 

 teoric water alone could have penetrated through 

 fissures, I have found the snowy stalactitic 

 walls covered with the delicate reticulations 

 of anUsnea. Podurellae penetrate into the icy 

 circles of the glaciers of Monte Rosa, of the 

 Grindelwald, and the Upper Aar. Chioncea 

 arenoides, described by Dalman, and the mi- 

 croscopic Discerea nivalis, or Protococcus, as 

 it used to be called, lives among the snows of 

 the polar regions as well as of our loftier mount- 

 ains. The red colour of old snow was known 

 to Aristotle, and was probably observed by him 

 among the mountains of Macedonia(39*). Whilst 

 upon the lofty summits of the Swiss Alps, Le- 

 cideas, Parmelias, and Umbilicarias alone, and 

 O 



sparingly, tint the rocks left bare of snow, in the 

 elevated regions of the tropical Andes, at the 

 height of 14,000 and 14,400 feet above the lev- 

 el of the sea, single specimens of beautiful 

 phanerogamous plants are still encountered — 

 the tomentose Calcitinm rufescens, Sida Pi- 

 chinchensis, and Saxifraga Boussingaulti. Hot 

 springs contain small insects — Hydroporua 

 thermalis, Galionellae, Oscillaloria, and Confer- 

 vse ; they even irrigate the roots of phaneroga- 

 mous plants. As water, earth, and air are peo- 

 pled by animated beings at the most dissimilar 

 temperatures, so also is the interior of the most 

 dissimilar parts in the bodies of animals inhab- 

 ited. Animated organisms have been found in 

 the blood of the frog, salmon, &c. According 

 to Nordmann, the whole of the fluids of the 

 i fish's eye are often filled with a suctorial worm 

 i<Diplostomum) ; and in the gills of the brasse 

 lives that extraordinary double animal, denomi- 

 nated by the naturalist just mentioned the Di- 

 plozoon paradoxum ; a creature consisting, as it 

 seems, of two perfect animals, grown cross- 

 wise together, having two heads and two cau- 

 dal extremities. 



Granting the existence of meteoric infusoria, 

 as they have been called, to be more than doubt- 

 ful, still the possibility must not be denied, that 

 as the pollen of the pine-tree has fallen year 

 after year from the air, so may minute infuso- 

 ry animalcules be passively raised with the wa- 

 tery vapour, and floated for a season in the at- 

 i mosphere(^"). This circumstance deserves to 

 be taken into serious consideration, in connec- 

 tion with the old dispute in regard to sponta- 

 neous generation(^^^), (generatio spontanea) ; 

 all the more, since Ehrenberg, as already ob- 

 served above, has discovered in the kind of 

 dust-rain which navigators frequently encoun- 

 ter in the neighbourhood of the Cape de Verd 

 Islands, at a distance of 380 sea miles from the 

 coast of Africa, the remains of eighteen spe- 

 cies of silicious shelled polygastric animalcules. 

 The exuberance of organisms M'hose distri- 

 bution in space is studied in the geography of 

 plants and animals, is considered either accord- 

 ing to the diversity and relative number of the 

 types of formation, according to the configura- 

 tion of the existing genera and species, or ac- 

 cording to the number of the individuals which 

 each particular species presents upon a given 

 superficial area. Among plants, as among an- 

 imals, it is an important distinction in their 

 mode of life, whether they are met with singly 

 or living in company. The species which I 

 have designated social plants(39") cover large 

 tracts of country with one unvarying growth. 

 To this class belong many species of sea-weed 

 in the ocean, Cladoniae and Musci in the waste 

 levels of Northern Asia, Grasses and tubular 

 looking Cactuses, Avicennia and Mangrove in 

 the tropical world, forests of coniferous trees and 

 birches in the Baltic and Siberian plains(3S8). 

 This kind of geographical distribution of plants, 

 along with the individual aspect of the species, 

 their size, the form of their leaves and flowers, 

 determines in an especial manner the physi- 

 ognomical character of a country. The shift- 

 ing image of animal life, so varied and attract- 

 ive, appealing so immediately to our feelings 

 of liking or disgust, remains almost wholly for- 

 eign, or at least is much less powerfully felt, in 



