90 ANIMALCULE IN A DROP OF WATER. 



glass containing five hundred and twenty-nine of these 

 squares, there must have been in this single drop of water — 

 taken out of the yellowish-green sea, in a place by no means 

 the most discolored — about twenty-six thousand four hun- 

 dred and fifty of these animalculsB ! Hence, reckoning sixty 

 drops to a dram, there would be a number in a gallon of 

 water exceeding, by one-half, the population of the whole 

 globe I It gives a wonderful conception of the minuteness 

 and vastness of creation, when we think of more than twen- 

 ty-six thousand animals — living, obtaining subsistence, and 

 moving perfectly at their ease, without annoyance to one 

 another — in a single drop of water ! 



The diameter of the largest of these animalculaa was only 

 the two-thousandth part of an inch, and many only the four- 

 thousandth. The army which Bonaparte led into Russia in 

 1812, estimated at five hundred thousand men, would have 

 extended — in a double row, or two men abreast, with two 

 feet three inches space for each couple of men — a distance 

 of one hundred and six and a half English miles ; the same 

 number of these animalculsB, arrayed in a similar way in two 

 rows, but touching one another, would only reach ^t;e/ce^ two 

 and a half inches ! A whale requiresi an ocean to sport in, 

 but about one hundred and fifty millions of these animalculae 

 would have abundant room in a tumbler of water! What a 

 stupendous idea is thus afforded of the immensity of crea- 

 tion, and of the bounty of Divine Providence, in furnishing 

 such a profusion of life in regions so remote from the habi- 

 tations of men! Even if we consider the number of animals 

 in a space of two miles square as great, what must be the 

 amount requisite for the discoloration of the sea through an 

 extent of, perhaps, twenty or thirty thousand square miles! 



If we turn from the Arctic seas to the warmer regions of 

 the ocean, we find the same wonderful profusion of animal 

 life existing in minute forms of infinite variety : small Mol- 

 luska (soft animals inhabiting shells) ; Crustacea (with artic- 



