96 THE OCEAN WORLD. 
certainly not yet demonstrated. In short, the direct observations 
made upon the theory of “ primitive generation” are as yet wanting 
in the necessary exactness ; those observers who profess to have 
witnessed the sudden origin of the minutest of the Infusoria from 
elementary substances have in all probability overlooked the presence 
of very minute organic germs in or among those elementary bodies. 
Many of the Infusoria are subject to metamorphoses ; and it has 
already been ascertained that certain species which have been con- 
sidered as distinct are only transitional forms of the same species 
depending on age. 
We know that it is common for insects to enclose themselves in 
protecting envelopes, and to remain for whole months shut up in this 
their retreat, to all appearance dead. Similar facts have been 
observed in the Infusoria, and indeed is intimately connected with 
their development. Some of them, previously to undergoing fission, 
become coated with a secretion of gelatinous matter, which gradually 
hardens so as to enclose the body in a “cyst.” We have even seen 
some of these beings surrounding strange bodies, as if in a mass of 
jelly, forming a sort of living envelope around them. 
Certain species present, in relation to the tenacity of life, 
phenomena which are only imperfectly known, but which will never 
fail to excite the surprise and admiration of the naturalist. By drying 
certain infusoria with care,.it is found possible to suspend and in- 
definitely prolong their life. Thus dried, these Infusoria may and 
are without doubt carried to great distances, for even an indefinite 
period of time, and then abandoned on some ledge of rock, on a 
housetop, in the cleft of a wall, or under the capital of a column, lie 
there undisturbed ; but let a drop of water approach it, and the 
dormant being awakes immediately—the microscopic Lazarus springs 
again into existence, feeds and multiplies as before, and its life, 
suspended possibly for years, resumes its interrupted course ! 
Into what a world of reflection does not a revelation of this 
mysterious property of a living creature plunge us ! 
The physiologist Miiller has noted another peculiarity in infusorial 
life. These animalcules can lose a part of their bodies without being 
destroyed ; the dead part disappears, and the individual, diminished 
by one-half or reduced to a fourth of its former size, continues to 
live as if nothing had happened. Miller has observed an Infusorian 
(Amphileptus meleagris) thus melt before his eyes until scarcely a 
sixteenth part of its body remained. After its loss, this sixteenth 
part of an animal continued to swim about without troubling itself as 
toits diminished proportions. ‘The Infusoria,” says Frédol, in “La 
