42 THE UNIVERSE. 



marked a number of stomachs, like little elongated sacks, 

 opening into a common mouth. In others, a long movable 

 filament is seen. 



We need not remark here that these animalcules, which 

 are complex creatures, have no connection with the imper- 

 ceptible monads that played so great a part in philosophy, 

 from Epicurus down to Leibnitz, and which the latter, in 

 his " Monadology," defined as a simple substance, which has 

 neither extent, figure, nor capability of being divided ; rep- 

 resenting only the atoms of nature or the elements of 

 things. 



CHAPTER VI. 



RESURRECTIONS : THE PIKENIX AND PALINGENESIS. 



SOME naturalists would fain transport themselves back to 

 the last century, they must have something of the mar- 

 vellous. They accept without hesitation the charming little 

 histories with which the rhetorical physiologists of that day 

 embellished their epistolary correspondence, in which gen- 

 ius and hyperbole predominated by turns. Now that the 

 precision of our instruments has rendered our observations 

 a hundred-fold more exact, these savants still obstinately 

 persist in carrying us back to an epoch at which experi- 

 ment had barely escaped from its swaddling clothes. 



Some believe, with the Abbe's Spallanzani and Fontana, 

 that mummies can be resuscitated ! 



To others the legend of the phoenix is still a reality : 

 they believe that certain Infusoria are incombustible. 



