INFUSORIA, 89 
historian Michelet. And M. Frédol 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 myriads ; 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° xo’, 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 débris. 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 
