95 



In the middle of that chaos of limy, often stin- 

 king and putrid substances , apparently deprived of 

 life, the eye, powerfully armed, discovers ideal pro- 

 portions and symmetrical forms, which the most fecond 

 imagination of an arabesque painter could not create. 

 These myriads of beings are however animated, pre- 

 senting, under the same type, an infinite variety of 

 forms; these corpuscules , whose size is frequently 

 the 0,000015, viz : the ISmillionth part of a Paris 

 inch, and seldom more than the Othousandth part, are 

 endowed with organs, simple indeed, if we compare 

 them with animals of superior orders, but complicated, 

 proportionally to their own body. They move, give 

 signs of feelings of self-preservation and propa- 

 gation, possess irritability, and often even the means 

 of appropriating to themselves extraneous substances, 

 foreign to their nature. 



The fluid, in which they live, is originally water, 

 in contact with inorganic matter, with heat, and with 

 the remains of organized bodies, the dissolution of 

 which forms a sort of animal lime. Several natu- 

 ralists have taken this unctuous , transparent and 

 gelatinous substance for 'parts or organs of these 

 beings, which they classed among plants. A more 

 attentive investigation of the mucous inferior layer 

 of Oscillatoriae (PI. VI.) shows, however, that the 

 gelatinous mass is composed of the deceased animal- 

 cules , in which we can distinguish the various de- 

 grees of their dissolution, their fibrous remains, and 

 their transition to a gelatinous form. This inferior 



