GROWTH OF FUNGI AND OF INFUSORIA. M3 



Wherever the water was green, these animalcules were found, 

 insomuch that the green color seemed to be caused by them." 

 After describing his, numerous experiments, Count Rumford 

 adds — 



" The phenomena now described may, perhaps, admit of ex- 

 planation, if we assume that the air produced in the water in the 

 different experiments was derived from the green matter; and 

 that the leaves, silk, cotton, &c, only facilitate its disengagement 

 by furnishing a surface adapted to the collection and escape of 

 the gas-bubbles. 



" These phenomena may also be explained by an assumption 

 favorable to the hypothesis of Priestley, namely, that the green 

 matter consists of plants, which, adhering to the surface of the 

 bodies placed in the water, there vegetate, and in consequence 

 give rise to the gas. 



" I would willingly adopt this opinion, were it not that a most 

 careful and attentive examination of the green water by means 

 of an excellent microscope, at the period when the oxygen was 

 most abundantly disengaged, has convinced me, that at this pe- 

 riod nothing to which the name of vegetable can be given is pre- 

 sent. The coloring matter of the water is of an animal nature, 

 and is nothing else than the accumulation of an infinite number 

 of little moving animals." — Philosophical Transactions of the 

 Royal Society, Vol. lxxvii., 1787. 



In a very interesting memoir, by Messrs. August and Morren 

 (Transactions of the Academy of Brussels, 1841), it is shown 

 that water with organic substances evolves " a gas" which con- 

 tains 61 per cent, of oxygen ; and they conclude their trea- 

 tise in the following words : — " It follows from the preceding re- 

 marks, that the phenomenon of the evolution of oxygen gas is 

 due to the Chlamidomonas pulvisculus (Ehrenberg), and to several 

 other green animals still lower in the scale." 



The author took the opportunity of convincing himself of the 

 accuracy of this long-observed fact, by means of some water out 

 of a water-trough in his garden, the water being colored strongly 

 green by different kinds of infusoria. This water was freed by 

 means of a sieve from all particles of vegetable matter, and be- 

 ing placed in a jar, inverted in a porcelain vessel containing the 



