98 THE OCEAN WORLD. 



some allowance for erroneous soundings), have yielded a hundred and 

 sixteen species. Near the Poles, where heings of higher organization 

 could not exist, the Infusoria are still met with in myriads ; those 

 which were observed in the Antarctic Seas, during the voyages of 

 Captain Sir James Boss, offer a richness of organization, often accom- 

 panied by elegance of form, quite unknown in more northern regions. 

 In the residuum of the blocks of ice floating about in latitude seventy- 

 eight degrees ten minutes, nearly fifty different species were found. 

 Many of them had ovaries, according to Ehrenberg, still green, which 

 proved that they had struggled successfully with the rigours of the 

 climate in searching for food. 



At a depth in the sea which exceeds the height of the loftiest 

 mountain, Humboldt asserts that each bed of water is animated by an 

 innumerable phalanx of inhabitants imperceptible to the human eye. 

 These microscopic creatures are, in short, the smallest and the most 

 numerous creations in Nature. They constitute with human beings 

 one of the wheels of that very complicated machine, the globe. They 

 are in the rank and at the station willed for them, as determined in 

 the great First Thought. Suppress these microscopic beings, and the 

 world would be incomplete. It was said, and wisely said, long, long 

 ago, " there is nothing so small to the view but that it may become 

 great by reflection." 



The Infusoria, in short, abound everywhere. We find their remains 

 on the loftiest mountain ridges, and in the profoundest depths of the 

 sea. They increase and multiply alike under the Equator, and 

 towards the polar regions. The seas, rivers, ponds the flower vase 

 which rests upon the casement even our tissues, and the fluids of 

 our bodies all contain infusorial animalcules. Whole beds of strata, 

 often many feet thick, and covering a surface of considerable extent, 

 are almost exclusively formed of their accumulated debris. It is to 

 the Infusoria that the mud of the Nile and other fluviatile and 

 lacustrine deposits owe their prodigious fertility. To them also is due 

 the red or green layer of colouring matter found in ponds and tanks 

 at certain seasons. When exposed to great solar heat, in order to 

 extract the salt, as it is in the vast artificial basins hollowed out for 

 the purpose in the salt marshes near the sea-shore in the south of 

 France, the salt water, when it reaches a certain degree of concentra- 

 tion, acquires a fine rose colour, which is due to the presence of in- 



