THE PEACOCK BUTTERFLY. 121 



by naturalists infusory animals. In the year 1797, 

 Girod Chantron observed a pond in France to be of 

 a blood-red colour. He examined it accurately, and 

 found, that the water, which appeared to be of a 

 brilliant red colour, the shade of which was between 

 cinnabar and carmine, was not itself actually red, but 

 assumed this appearance from innumerable animalculae, 

 which were not visible to the naked eye, but which 

 could be distinctly seen by the aid of a microscope.* 

 Captain Scoresby mentions, that, in 1820, he observed 

 the water of the Greenland Sea striped alternately 

 with green and blue, and that those particular colours 

 were produced by animalculae, of such extreme 

 minuteness, that he reckoned, in a single drop of 

 water, 26,450 animalcules ; hence, reckoning 60 drops 

 to a drachm, there would be in a gallon a number 

 equal to one half of the population of the globe. 

 This coloured water, to the extent of six degrees of 

 latitude, formed one-fourth of the surface of the 

 Greenland Sea.f Although this observation does 

 not belong to the bloody colour of water, yet it 

 clearly indicates the abundance of microscopic organic 

 beings in water. 



The meteoric substances, which are usually colour- 

 less, such as dew, snow, rain, and hail, have been 

 said to fall blood-red from the atmosphere. 



In Stowe's Chronicle, we have two accounts of 

 showers of blood ; he says, that, in the reign of 



* Buttet. de Sc. Nat. a. 6. 



f SCORESBY 's Arctic Regions, vol. i. 



