ATMOSPHERIC VOYAGERS. 25 



a half in dried sand ; yet, in two hours after the application of 

 rain-water, the greater part recovered life and motion. Some 

 experimenters have been of opinion that the Rotifera may be 

 really deprived of life, and kept in that state for many weeks, 

 and yet be again restored to animation. Ehrenberg, Humboldt, 

 and all eminent philosophers, however, entirely repudiate this 

 idea ; and, quite apart from such testimony, we may be perfectly 

 assured that the mysterious principle of life, no matter how 

 minute the beings in which it has resided, is never once really 

 extinguished without passing irrecoverably beyond all human 

 means of recall, into the care of Him to whom alone belong " the 

 issues from death." 



Our hasty survey of the microscopic life of the globe would be 

 imperfect without a passing reference to the various minute 

 organisms which are found floating around us, unseen, in the 

 atmosphere. In greater or smaller quantities, the atmosphere 

 always contains these invisible living atoms, their elevation from 

 the earth's surface being sometimes effected by winds, at other 

 times, probably, by ascending vapours. At times vast clouds of 

 these beings are raised into the air, and carried by winds many 

 hundreds of miles from the districts where they originate, 

 rendering the atmosphere thick and heavy, and covering every 

 object on which they fall with what appears to the naked eye a 

 fine impalpable dust. In this manner myriads of forms, both of 

 animal and vegetable life, are dispersed over the earth, and 

 places before sterile and lifeless are converted into abodes of 

 teeming and busy populations. 



And now let us prevail upon those of our readers to whom the 

 subject of this Chapter may be to any extent new, to reflect a little 

 on what has been brought before them. In spring and summer, 

 for example, when they walk out by the sea-shore, and cast their 

 eyes over the broad expanse of waters, let them remember that 

 those mysterious depths are peopled with myriads of these minute 

 beings, each as perfectly formed, and as beautifully adapted to 

 the part it has to perform in the economy of nature, as the most 

 exalted of organisms. In rambling, too, among green and shady 

 woods, by fragrant hedgerows, or out upon the breezy heaths and 

 open commons, everywhere let them recall the same fact, that, 

 wherever they see, if it be only a few drops of standing water in 

 every ditch, and pond, and crystal pool within and beneath all 



