MICROSCOPIC ANIMALCULES. 55 



tribe have been kept in a vacuum for thirty 

 days ; they have been subjected to the most 

 trying species of desiccation known, by the use 

 of sulphuric acid and chloride of calcium, and 

 yet they have revived again. 1 Professor Owen 

 says, that he witnessed at Freiburg, in 1838, 

 the revival of an Arctiscon which had been 

 preserved by Professor Schultze in dry sand up- 

 wards of four years. 2 Some have hence ventured 

 to conclude that there is here a true and complete 

 revivification a restoration of life ! The highest 

 authorities, Ehrenberg and Humboldt, justly 

 maintain that in such cases there had been no 

 death; that the principle of life, though en- 

 feebled and dormant, had never actually fled. 3 

 But even with this explanation, how startling 

 the phenomenon, that an invisible animalcule, 

 with an amazingly minute and delicate organi- 

 zation of head, eyes, mouth, jaws, teeth, throat, 

 stomach, should be dried up to dust, remain 

 dormant, as if dead, for years, and yet revive 

 again ! How strange such a sleep ! How 



1 Carpenter on the Microscope, p. 497. 



2 Owen's Comp. Anat., vol. i. p. 40. 



3 Humboldt's Aspects of Nature, p. 240. 



