344 OBGANIC LIFE. 



when opened by blasting, I have observed the snow-white 

 stalactitic walls covered by the delicate net-work of an Usnea. 

 Podurellse are found in fissures of the glaciers of Monte 

 Rosa, and of those of the Grindelwald and the upper 

 Aar ; the Chionsea araneoides, described by Dalman, and the 

 microscopic Discerea nivalis (formerly called Protococcns), 

 live in the polar snows as well as in those of our high 

 mountains. The red colour of long-fallen snow had been 

 noticed by Aristotle, who had probably observed it in the 

 Macedonian mountains. ( 424 ) On the highest summits of 

 the Swiss Alps, lecidese, parmelise, and umbilicarise, scantily 

 tinge the surface of the rocks where they are denuded of snow ; 

 but on the chain of the tropical Andes, beautiful phsenogamous 

 plants, the woolly Culeitium rufescens, Sida pinchinchensis, 

 and Saxifraga boussingaulti, present, isolated flowers, at 

 elevations of about 15000 English feet above the level of the 

 sea. Thermal springs contain small insects (Hydroporas 

 thermalis), gallionellse, oscillatoria, and confervse : whilst their 

 waters nourish the fine fibres of the roots of phsenogamous 

 plants. Not only are earth, air, and water, filled with life, 

 and that at the most different temperatures, but also the 

 interior of the various parts of animal bodies : there are 

 animalcula in the blood of frogs and of salmon : according 

 to Xordmann, the fluids of the e^es of fishes are often filled 

 with a worm which lives by suction (Diplostomum) ; and the 

 same naturalist has even discovered in the gills of the Bleak 

 an extraordinary double animal (Diplozoon paradoxon) 

 having two heads and two caudal extremities disposed in 

 rectangular directions. 



Although the existence of meteoric infusoria is more 



