INFUSORIA. 89 



historian Michelet. And M. Fre'dol tells us that "the infusorial 

 animalcules are so small that a drop of water may contain them in 

 many millions. They exist in all waters, the fresh as well as the salt, 

 the cold as well as the hot. The great rivers are continually dis- 

 charging them in vast quantities into the sea." 



The Ganges transports them in the course of one year in masses 

 equal to six or eight times the size of the great pyramid of Egypt. 



Water collected between the Philippine and the Marianne Isles, 

 at the depth of 22,000 feet (making some allowance for erroneous 

 soundings), has been found to contain 116 species. Near the Poles 

 the Infusoria are still met with in mjTiads ; many species were ob- 

 served in the Antarctic Seas during the voyages of Captain Sir James 

 Ross. In the residuum of the blocks of ice floating about in latitude 

 78^ 10', nearly fifty different species were found. In many of them, 

 according to Ehrenberg, the contents were still green, which proved 

 that they had struggled successfully with the rigours of the climate in 

 searching for food. 



Humboldt asserts that, at a depth which exceeds the height of 

 the loftiest mountain, every portion of the bottom of the sea is ani- 

 mated by an innumerable phalanx of inhabitants quite imperceptible 

 to the human eye. These microscopic creatures are, in short, the 

 smallest and among the most numerous creations in Nature. They 

 constitute, with human beings, one of the wheels of that very compli- 

 cated machine, the globe. They are in the rank and at the station 

 willed for them, as determined in the great First Thought. Suppress 

 these microscopic beings, and the world would be incomplete. It 

 was said, and wisely said, long, long ago, " there is nothing so small 

 to the view but that it may become great by reflection." 



The Infusoria, in short, abound everywhere. We find their 

 remains on the loftiest mountain ridges, and in the profoundest 

 depths of the sea. They increase and multiply alike under the 

 Equator, and towards the polar regions. The seas, rivers, ponds — 

 the flower vase which rests upon the casement — even our tissues, and 

 the fluids of our bodies — may all contain infusorial animalcules. 

 Whole beds of strata, often many feet thick, and covering a surface 

 of considerable extent, are to be met with almost exclusively formed 

 of their accumulated de'bris. It is to the Infusoria that the mud of 

 the Nile and other fluviatile and lacustrine deposits are said to owe 

 their prodigious fertility. To them also is sometimes due the red or 

 green colouring matter to be found in ponds and tanks at certain 

 seasons. When water is exposed to great solar heat, in order to 

 extract the salt from it — as it is in the vast artificial basins hollowed 



