180 Ehreiiberg on Infusoria from tlie South Pole. 



tlie upper strata of air^ and brought ]jy a change of the current 

 in another direction, or Himantidium Papilio, together with Suri- 

 rella, likewise occur elsewhere, namely in Africa. 



Review of the Results of these Investigations. 



1. Not only is there, as resulted from the former observations 

 of the author (vide d. Mikroskopische Leben in Amerika, Spitz- 

 bergen, &c.), an invisible minute creation in the neighbom'hood 

 of the Pole, where the larger animals can no longer subsist, but 

 a similar creation is highly developed at the South Pole. 



2. Even the ice and snow of the South Polar Sea is rich in 

 living organisms, contending successfully with the extremity of 

 cold. 



3. The microscopic living forms of the South Polar Sea con- 

 tain great riches hitherto wholly unknown, frequently of very ele- 

 gant shape, since no less than seven peculiar genera have been 

 discovered, of which some contain several, one as many as seven 

 species. 



4. The forms collected in the year 1842, near Victoria Land, 

 were capable of being examined in an almost fresh state in Berlin 

 in May 1844, which shows how long preservation is possible. 



5. The ocean is not only populated at certain localities, and in 

 inland seas or on the coasts, with invisible living atoms, but is pro- 

 portionately thickly crowded with life everywhere in the clearest 

 state of the sea-water and far from the coasts. 



6. Hitherto but one perfectly microscopic form from the high 

 sea was known, and even that from the neighbourhood of the 

 coast, namely the Astasia oceanica, which Von Chamisso had ob- 

 served j all other accounts were imperfect and useless. By the 

 new materials the number of species is increased nearly 100. 



7. The hitherto observed oceanic microscopic forms are chiefly 

 siliceous-loricated animals with some calcareous-shelled. Do 

 these numerous forms derive the material of their shells from 

 the bottom of the sea ? This question becomes daily more inter- 

 esting. 



8. Siliceous- and calcareous-shelled minute living forms are 

 not only mixed up with the muddy sea-bottom, but they them- 

 selves form it. They live even to a depth of 270 fathom, and 

 consequently support a pressure of water equal to 50 atmospheres; 

 the whole influence of this does not indeed bear upon their organic 

 tissues when they are locally fixed, but when they move from the 

 bottom upwards or reversely j yet it does not appear to have acted 

 on the drawn up specimens. V.Tio can doubt but that organic 

 beings which can support a weight of 50 atmospheres may sup- 

 port 100 and more ? 



9. The supposition, that in great depths, above 100 fathom, 



