CENEEAI VIEW. 341 



globe, and its distribution in height and in depth, our 

 knowledge has been wonderfully augmented by Ehrenberg's 

 brilliant discoveries (iiber das Verhalten des kleinsten 

 Lebens in dem Weltmeere wie in dem Eise der Polar- 

 lander), which rest not on ingenious combinations and infe- 

 rences, but on direct and exact observation. By these dis- 

 coveries the sphere of animated existence we may say the 

 horizon of life -has expanded before our view. " Not only is 

 there no interruption of minute microscopic forms of animal 

 life in the vicinity of either Pole where larger animals can- 

 not maintain themselves, but we find among the micro- 

 scopic animals of the South Polar Seas, collected in the 

 Antarctic Expedition of Captain James Ross, a remarkable 

 abundance of new forms, which are often of great elegance. 

 Even in the residuum obtained from melted ice which floats 

 in rounded fragments in lat. 78 10' S., there have been 

 found above fifty species of siliceous -shelled polygastrica, and 

 even coscinodiscse with green ovaries, which were there- 

 fore certainly living and able to resist the extreme severity 

 of the cold. In the Gulf of the Erebus and Terror, sixty- 

 eight siliceous-shelled polygastrica and phytolitharia, together 

 with a single calcareous-shelled polythalamia, were brought 

 up by the lead from depths of 1242 to 1620 English feet/' 

 By far the greater number of the oceanic microscopic 

 forms hitherto observed belong to the siliceous-shelled in- 

 fusoria, although the chemical analysis of sea-water has not 

 shewn silica to be one of its essential constituents, and it 

 could only indeed exist in water in a state of simple mixture 

 or suspension. It is not only in particular localities, in 

 inland waters or in the vicinity of coasts, that the ocean 



