186 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS LESSONS. 



subject ; nor will you, while you listen to his story as 

 you look at some of his very excellent preparations. 



"Marvel of marvels," says he, "in this world of wonders, 

 that a globule of jelly destitute of any external integu- 

 ment should put forth such attenuated filaments " that 

 is, the hair-like processes which are seen piercing through 

 the invisible openings which give the name to these specks 

 of creatioD, " the atoms of whicli not only cohere, but 

 serve the double office of organs of locomotion, and of 

 cables mooring it to its anchorage ! Yet so it is ; and the 

 factor in this wonder is that mystery of mysteries that 

 principle which we call life, the secret of which we are 

 ever seeking to penetrate, but which we,~living in an age 

 of electricity and steam, seem as far off from doing as 

 were the sages who, a hundred generations past, strove 

 to fathom its profound depths. 



" Unendowed with the complex organizations of animals 

 higher in the scale than themselves, these tiny things of 

 beauty yet perform the varied functions of life efficiently, 

 exercising a most important influence in Nature's 

 economy. . . . 



*' Whole ranges of mountains, in various parts of the 

 world, are composed of these tiny creatures, and vast 

 deposits of them, spreading in the aggregate over many 

 thousands of square miles, have been traced in Hin- 

 dostan, Egypt, and the Holy Land and Arabia. These 

 minute organisms constitute the mass of that pure white 

 substance which has given so it is said its name of 

 Albion (alba, white) to Britain ; and how inconceivably 

 vast must be these hosts, when it is remembered that 

 this formation alone once extended in a north-westerly 

 and south-easterly direction from Ireland to the Crimea, 

 a distance of eleven hundred miles ; its breadth, from the 

 south of Sweden to the south of Bordeaux, being (allow- 



