40 



consequence of the former, he adds, is a great, an exceedingly 

 great, improbabihty of the existence of a spontaneous 

 generation, or a motherless origin of organic bodies. 



Ehrenberg's experiments in feeding the Infusoria with 

 colored substances, such as carmine, indigo, &c., were 

 generally successful; and as the transparency of their 

 bodies enabled him to see this colored matter within them, 

 and to trace its course, he considered it a satisfactory 

 evidence of their internal organization, and founded upon it 

 one of his two great divisions of the animalcular tribe, the 

 Polygastrica, so called from the numerous cells within them, 

 which he considered as stomachs. With one family, how- 

 ever, the Bacillaria, his attempts in this way were, at first, 

 unavailing; and as this familiy was claimed by various 

 botanists as a portion of the vegetable kingdom, or, at least, 

 as a connecting link between that and the animal, he was 

 the more desirous of finding some criterion by which their 

 position might be more certainly determined. After a 

 period of six years fruitless labor, as he tells us, he accom- 

 plished his object by a slight alteration in the manner of 

 supplying them with this colored food, and saw the recep- 

 tion of it in seven species of Navicula, in Gomphonema 

 paradoxum, and Arthrodesmus quadricaudatus and with 

 Closterium acerosunj, and he thus had the happiness to 

 observe their internal organization, and also to establish 

 incontestably, as he thinks, their claim to be ranked as 

 animals.* It seems a little remarkable, that the botanical 

 opponents of Ehrenberg, have omitted to notice this fact, 

 on which he lays so great stress, and rest their opposition to 

 his views, chiefly on the presence of starch, as indicated by 

 the action of iodine on the bodies of some members of this 

 family. The controversy is not yet closed ; able writers 

 and acute observers appear on both sides, and we can finish 

 our observations no better than by saying, " Non nostrum 

 inter illos tantas componere lites." 



* Infusionsthierschen, pp. 87, 242. 



