352 COSMOS. 



We thus find from the most recent observations that animal 

 life predominates amid the eternal night of the depths of 

 ocean, whilst vegetable life, which is so dependent on the 

 periodic action of the solar rays, is most prevalent on conti- 

 nents. The mass of vegetation on the Earth very far exceeds 

 that of animal organisms. For what is the volume of all the 

 large living cetacea and pachydermata, when compared with 

 the thickly crowded colossal trunks of trees of from 8 to 12 

 feet in diameter, which fill the vast forests covering the 

 tropical region of South America, between the Orinoco, the 

 Amazon, and the Rio da Madeira. And although the character 

 of different portions of the earth depends on the combination 

 of external phenomena, as the outlines of mountains the phy- 

 siognomy of plants and animals the azure of the sky the 

 forms of the clouds and the transparency of the atmosphere 

 it must still be admitted that the vegetable mantle with 

 which the earth is decked, constitutes the main feature of 

 the picture. Animal forms are inferior in mass, and their 

 powers of motion often withdraw them from our sight. The 

 vegetable kingdom, on the contrary, acts upon our imagination 

 by its continued presence, and by the magnitude of its forms 

 for the size of a tree indicates its age, and here alone age is asso- 

 ciated with the expression of a constantly renewed vigour.* 

 In the animal kingdom (and this knowledge is also the result of 

 Ehrenberg's discoveries) the forms which we term microscopic 

 occupy the largest space, in consequence of their rapid pro- 

 pagation, f The minutest of the infusoria, the monadida3, have 



land and at the base of the volcanic mountain Erebus Dr. Hooker 

 accounted for the fact, that the skeletons of Diatomaceae had been found 

 in the lava of volcanic mountains, by referring to these deposits at 

 Mount Erebus, which lie in such a position as to render it quite possible 

 that the skeletons of these vegetables should pass into the lower 

 fissures of the mountain, and then passing into the stream of lava, be 

 thrown out, unacted upon by the heat to which they have been exposed. 

 See Dr. Hooker's Paper, read before the British Association at Oxford, 

 July, 1847.] 2V. 



* Humboldt, Ansichtender Natur (2te Ausgabe, 1826), bd. ii. s. 21. 



f On multiplication by spontaneous division of the mother-corpuscle, 

 and intercalation of new substance, see Ehrenberg, Von den jetzt leben- 

 den Thierarten der Kreidebildung, in the Abhandl. der Berliner 

 Akad. der Wiss., 1839, s. 94. The most powerful productive faculty 

 in nature, is that manifested in the vorticellee. Estimations of the 

 greatest possible development of masses will be found in Ehrenberg's 



