228 SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS [Min 



a will to commence and to go on, a will to leave off (for the 

 ciliary current is entirely under control) ; a consciousness of the 

 readiness of the pellet ; an accurate estimate of the spot where 

 it needs to be deposited (may I not say also, a memory where 

 the previous ones had been laid, since the deposition does not 

 go on in regular succession, but now and then, yet so as to keep 

 the edge tolerably uniform in height ?), and a will to determine 

 that there it shall be put. But surely these are mental powers. 

 Yet mind animating an atom so small that your eyes strained 

 to the utmost can only just discern the speck in the most 

 favourable circumstances, as when you hold the glass which 

 contains it between your eye and the light, so that the ray shall 

 illuminate the tiny form while the background is dark behind 

 it 1 no. 



The Mighty in the Minute. 



The circulation of the ocean, its phosphorescence, and the 

 coloration of certain seas, make known but imperfectly what 

 can be accomplished by the incalculable numbers, the prodigious 

 fecundity, and the devouring activity of the minute animals, 

 scarcely perceptible individually, and of so elementary an 

 organisation, with which it teems. Yet geology demonstrates 

 that it was they which laid the foundation of animal life in that 

 immense cradle, that inexhaustible nursery (as Maury calls it) ; 

 it is they which maintain a never- varying identity in the com- 

 position of its waters, absorbing and elaborating the mineral 

 and organic properties with which these are incessantly loaded. 

 There are some which serve as the food of stronger and superior 

 species, the molluscs and the radiatas ; these in their turn 

 nourish the fish and crustaceans, which are themselves devoured, 

 either by far larger fishes or by the cetaceae and amphibians. 

 There are others indefatigable architects which construct the 

 fantastic edifices that from the depths of ocean mount to its 

 very surface, and spread afar, ramify, and terminate in coral 

 reef and islands. Others, finally, by dying, have accumulated 

 at certain points their silicious or calcareous wrecks, and 

 formed numerous banks and shallows, and entire beds of 

 deposit, where the geologist to-day may study these first-born 

 of creation. MY. 



