68 TOILERS IN THE SEA. 



the Polycystins, as they came to be called, which 

 were so minute as to be invisible to the naked eye, 

 except as small grains of dust, but which under a 

 low power of the microscope, are seen to be a variety 

 of elegant forms, or skeletons, perforated with holes 

 so as to resemble lattice-work, composed of a white 

 translucent substance resembling flint, and none of 

 them so large as a pin's head. 



It was apparently in January, 1846, that Dr. Davy, 

 who was then resident at Barbados, first detected 

 these organisms in the chalk beneath the coral rock, 

 and when Sir R. Schomburgh went thither he was 

 informed of the fact, and some of the skeletons were 

 exhibited to him under the microscope. Full of 

 enthusiasm and delight at the discovery, a portion of 

 this deposit of chalk marl was sent to the eminent 

 Professor Ehrenberg, of Berlin, and during the same 

 year this microscopist announced the discovery, in a 

 communication to the Berlin Academy of Sciences, in 

 which he said, " for these organisms constitute part 

 of a chain, which, though in the individual link it be 

 microscopic, yet in the mass it is a mighty one, con- 

 necting the life-phenomena of distant ages of the 

 earth, and proving that the dawn of organic nature 

 co-existent with us, reaches farther back in the 

 history of the earth than had hitherto been suspected. 

 The microscopic organisms are very inferior, in in- 

 dividual energy, to lions and elephants, but in their 



