INFUSORIAL ANIMALCULES. 



SECTION IX. On the Resuscitation of Infusoria. 



In almost all ages of the world there has been evinced a 

 restless desire within us to pry into the nature or prin- 

 ciple of life, and the precise conditions on which it is 

 retained; and, notwithstanding that our bodies, its pre- 

 sent abiding place, are confessedly frail and perishable, the 

 unravelling of an invisible and immaterial agent has been 

 sought for by a reference to them. Hence, each suc- 

 ceeding generation has occupied itself in proving the 

 fallacy of preceding theories on this mysterious subject, 

 and in forming new ones of their own. Even in modern 

 times we have been told that dead matter, under certain 

 circumstances, becomes spontaneously alive, such as 

 horse-hair under water, &c. Too true it is, however, 

 that, let our researches be what they may, unless our 

 views are directed upwards to a higher principle than 

 anything that we can argue upon, in what we see around 

 us, our labours must end in nought but " vanity and vex- 

 ation of spirit." 



What, perhaps, has tended to awaken our inquisi- 

 tiveness on this subject, more than anything else, has 

 been that death-like condition of sleep, or suspended 

 animation, in which human beings and other animals have 

 been known to remain for a great length of time, during 

 which the body is motionless, and apparently unsustained 

 by any nourishment whatever. In 1701, Leeiiwenhoek 

 observed these appearances in the Rotatorial Infusoria; 

 and to such an extent did his observations proceed, that 



D 



