412 



FARMERS' REGISTER— ANIMALCULES. 



they do not pursue any regular order, even in t^im- 

 ilar inlusions. If the vessel he large, and the cir- 

 cumstances under which it is placed sufficiently 

 favorable, a still higher description of animalcules 

 will succeed, viz. "the Vorticella, and, lastly, the 

 Brachioni; and thus a single infusion will repay 

 for the little trouble of making it, with a great va- 

 riety of species. Water in which flour has been 

 steeped will be found to abound ;dso with animal- 

 cules; and It is remarked by G. Leach, Esq. that 

 the leaden troughs constantly a})propriated for 

 birds to drink out of, contain several descriptions 

 of tliem, and more especially those of thev/hee! ge- 

 nus. In ponds, too, esiJeciailv in the shallow 

 parts, near their edges, and in the immediate vi- 

 cinity of water plants, prodigious quantities of all 

 kinds may be easily procured; so that, possessing 

 as we do such myriads of them around us, that 

 they impregnate almost every thing that we eat 

 and drink, touch and breathe, an anxiety to know 

 more about them, and the effects they produce, 

 cannot but be regarded as rational and laudable." 

 It appears, also, by the investigations of other 

 inquiries, that animalcules may be produced by 

 any species of decomposition, whether of vege- 

 table or animal substances. It would almost 

 eeem, from what is related, that the whole of the 

 vegetable and animal kingdoms are but com- 

 pounds of matter resoluble into these extraordinary 

 minute creatures. An idea of this kind is by no 

 means new, and it wdl perhaps be remembered that 

 Butfon tried experiments to prove its accuracy. "To 

 discover," says he, "whether all the parts of ani- 

 mals, and all the seeds of plants, contained moving 

 organic particles, I made infusions of the flesh ol 

 different animals, and of the seeds of more than 

 twenty different species of vegetables; and after 

 remaining some days in close glasses, I had the 

 pleasure of seeing organic mo^■ing particles in all 

 of them. In some they appeared sooner, in others 

 later: some preserved. then' motion for months and 

 others soon lost it. Some at first produced large mov- 

 ing globulous resembling animals, which changed 

 their figure, split, and became gradually smaller; 

 others produced only small globules, whose mo- 



animalcules, which proceeded from the putrefac- 

 tion of the mushroom; for by pecking at these seeds, 

 which are reddish, light, round bodies, they moved 

 them about with great agility in a variety of di- 

 rections; Avhile the litilc animals themselves were 

 scarcely visible, till the food they had eaten dis- 

 covered them. The satisfaction I received from 

 clearing up this point, led me into many other cu- 

 rious and interesting experiments. The ingenious 

 Mr. Needham supposes these little transparent 

 ramified filaments, and jointed or coralloid bodies 

 (strung like coral beads) v/hich the microscope 

 discovers to us on the surface of inert animal and 

 vegetable infusions when they become putrid, to be 

 zooph3"tcs, or branched animals; but to me they 

 appear, aiier a careful scrutiny with the best glass- 

 es, to be that genus of fungi called mucur, or 

 mouldiness. Their vegetation is so amazuigly 

 quick, tJiat they may be perceived in the micro- 

 scope even to grow and feed under tlie eye of the 

 obscn-'cr. Mr. Needham has pointed out to us a 

 species that is very remarka,ble lor its parts of fi'uc- 

 tificalion. This, he says, i)roceeds from an infu- 

 sion of bruised Avheat. I ha\e seen the same 

 species proceed from the body of a dead fly, which 

 has become putrid by lying floating for some time 

 in a glass of water where some flowers had been. 

 This species of mucor sends forth a mass of trans- 

 parent filamentous roots, from Vv'hence arise hollow 

 stems, that support little oblong vessels, Avith a 

 hole on the top of each. — From these 1 could 

 plainly see minute globules or seeds issue forth in 

 great abundance, with an elastic force, and iurn 

 about in the water as if they were animated! 

 Continuing to view them with some attention, I 

 could just discover that the putrid water which sur- 

 rounded them was full of the minutest animalcula; 

 and that these little creatures began to attack the 

 seeds of the mucor for food. This new motion 

 continued the appearance of their being alive for 

 some time longer; but soon after, many of them 

 arose to the surface of the water, remaining there 

 without motion; and a succession of them afler- 

 wards coming up, they united together in little 

 thin masses, and floated to the edge of the water, 



fions were extremely rapid; and others produced reinainingtherequiteinactiveduringthetimeof ob- 

 filaments which grew larger, seemed to vegetate, i servation. 



and then swelled and poured forth torrents of 

 moving globules." The subsecjuent examinations 

 of physiologists have, in a great measure, deter- 

 mined that these moving globules of Buflon, or 

 molecules, as they are scientifically termed, are 

 the primarj- atoms of which plants and animals are 

 composed, although, at the same time, we are not 

 yet beyond the regions of conjecture with respect 

 to how these molecules, or animalcula are either 

 brought into substantial consistency, or how the}' 

 are developed by the separation of matter during 

 the putrefactive process. So intimately does the 

 vegetable, in its earliest rudiments, sometimes bear 

 an analogy to animal life, that it is occasionally dif- 

 ficult to separate them: it is at least certain that 

 the commencement of the vegetable process is 

 some way connected with the existence and oper- 

 ations of^ molecules. "Having, at the request of 

 Dr. Linnfeus (saj-s Mr. Ellis, a Avriter in the 

 Philosophical Transactions) made several experi- 

 ments on the infusion of mushrooms in water, in 

 order to prove the theory that these seeds are first 

 animals and then plants, it appeared evidently, 

 that the seeds were put in motion by very minute 



The celebrated botanist Dr. Robert Brown, also 

 entered into experiments of this nature, with the 

 view of identifying the rudiments of vegetable 

 with animal life, which he successfully accomplish- 

 ed. He found that the |)ollen and tissue of jjlants 

 were the constituent or elementary molecules or 

 organic bodies. "On examining," says he, "the 

 various animal and vegetable tissues, whether 

 living or dead, they were always found to exist; 

 and merely by bruising these substances in water, 

 I never fiiiled to disengage the molecules in suffi- 

 cient numbers to ascertain their apparent identity 

 in size, form, and motion, with the smaller particles 

 of the grains of the pollen. I examined also va- 

 rious products of organic bodies, particularly the 

 gum raisins, and substances of vegetable origin, 

 extending my inquiry even to pit coal, and in all 

 these bodies molecules Avere found in abun- 

 dance." 



Of late, very considerable impTovements have 

 been made upon microscopes, by which much in- 

 teresting information regarding the habits and 

 character of aninicdcules has been aflbrded. These 

 microscopes are of immense power ui magnify- 



