174 VIGNETTES FROM INVISIBLE LIFE. 



So, in the absence of elaborate and expensive 

 drawings, we can only say to the reader, examine 

 them for yourself ; put them under the most 

 searching gaze, and with the highest powers of 

 the microscope, and the more you scrutinise, the 

 more beauty will be revealed, and the greater will 

 be your wonder and admiration. 



Other gems and jewels rare, will fade into in- 

 feriority beside these productions of nature. The 

 midnight lamp grows dim as the hours pass by 

 and your whole being is rapt in adoring con- 

 templation. The dull earth is transformed, not 

 in imagination only, but in sober truth to your 

 mind, for is it not really encrusted all over with 

 these sparkling gems, far surpassing all the 

 dreams of magician or poet ? 



One hundred millions of Diatom caskets do not 

 weigh a grain. A single cubic inch of the polish- 

 ing slate in Bohemia, which exists in beds or strata 

 of fourteen feet in thickness, contains forty thou- 

 sand millions of them. Vast and extensive tracts of 

 the earth's crust is formed almost entirely of them. 

 The city of Richmond, in Virginia, is built on a 

 bed of Diatomacece eighteen feet in thickness. 



