MICROSCOPIC VEGETABLES. 41 



know not what we owe to these Invisible 

 Plants." 



" Sight could not trace their evanescent changes, 

 Nor comprehend their motions, till minute 

 And curious observation caught the clue 

 To this live labyrinth, where every one, 

 By instinct taught, performed its little task. 

 Millions of millions, thus from age to age, 

 With simplest skill, and toil unweariable, 

 No moment and no movement unimproved, 

 Laid line on line, on terrace terrace spread, 

 To swell the heightening, brightening, gradual mount. 

 Each wrought alone, yet all together wrought, 

 Unconscious, not unworthy, instruments 

 By which a Hand Invisible was rearing 

 A new creation in the secret deep. 

 Omnipotence wrought in them, with them, by them ; 

 Hence what Omnipotence alone could do, 

 Worms did. 



Frail were their frames, ephemeral their lives, 

 Their masonry imperishable." 



5. The Volvocinece are an extremely interest- 

 ing class, both on account of the beauty and 

 regularity of their forms, and their striking re- 

 semblance in their movements to real animals. 

 They derive their name from the manner in 

 which they revolve upon their own axis. Thus 

 Leeuwenhoeck, who described some of the group 

 at the distance of 150 years, speaks of an ani- 

 malcule (then so regarded) " a thousand times 



