INFUSOEIA. 97 



Surriray discovered the noctiluca while investigating the cause of 

 phosphorescence of sea water at Havre, where it was abundant in the 

 basins; sometimes in such abundance as to form a crust on the 

 surface of the water of considerable thickness. " This singular little 

 creature," says M. Fredol, " offers here and there in its interior certain 

 granules, probably germs, and also luminous points, which appear and 

 disappear with great rapidity the least agitation determining their 

 lustre." The noctiluca are so abundant in the Mediterranean and in 

 some parts of the channel, that in a cubic foot of sea water, which has 

 been rendered phosphorescent by their presence, it is calculated that 

 there exist about twenty-five thousand. 



INFUSORIA. 



With the Infusoria we return to the domain of the infinitely little. 

 Of this very interesting group a large proportion are marine, and 

 numerous varieties of them are found in British seas. In their 

 minuteness and variety they almost baffle the attempts of naturalists 

 to classify them. 



The waters, both fresh and salt, are inhabited by legions of active, 

 ever-moving beings, of dimensions so small as to be inappreciable to 

 the naked eye ; these minute creatures are disseminated by millions 

 and thousands of millions in the great deep, and all knowledge of 

 them would have escaped us, as they escaped the knowledge of the 

 ancients, but for the discovery of the microscope, the sixth sense of 

 man, as it has been happily expressed by the historian and poet 

 Michelet. Another writer of equally poetical mind, M. Fredol, tells 

 us that " the infusorial animalcules are so small that a drop of water 

 may contain them in many millions. They exist in all waters, the 

 fresh as well as the salt, the cold as well as the hot. The great 

 rivers are continually discharging them in vast quantities into the 

 sea." 



The Ganges transports them in the course of one year in masses 

 equal to six or eight times the size of the great pyramid of Egypt. 

 Among these animalcules, according to Ehrenberg, we may reckon 

 seventy-one different species. 



The water collected in vases between the Philippine and the 

 Marianne Isles at the depth of twenty-two thousand feet (making 



H 





