THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 19 



suffers no injury from the most terrible cold that we know 

 of More than fifty species of animalcules with silicious 

 carapaces were discovered by Captain Sir James Ross on 

 the rounded masses of ice which float in the Polar Seas at 

 the seventy-eighth degree of south latitude. Some of 

 those which this navigator collected in the vicinity of 

 Victoria Land, in spite of distance and storms, arrived full 

 of vitality at Berlin. 



In these desolate regions the depths of ocean offer to 

 the view even more life than its surface. In the Gulf of 

 Erebus, the plummet brought up, from a depth of more 

 than 500 yards, sixty-eight species of silicious Microzoa; 

 and they have been discovered at a depth of more than 

 12,000 feet, where they had to support the enormous pres- 

 sure of 375 atmospheres — a pressure capable of bursting 

 a cannon, but which the gelatinovis body of a microscopic 

 infusorium resists in some marvellous way. 



These living corpuscles, which multiply in the trans- 

 parent regions of the ocean, abound equally in the muddy 

 rivers of our waters and ponds, and without being aware 

 of it we daily gulp down myriads of them in the fluids we 



named Gallionella sol. On eithei- side of it may be noticed four smaller circular 

 sections, of various sizes and forms. Nos. 4 and 7 are two kinds of Goscinodiscus ; 

 5 is Discoplea liotula; 19, Stjmholopliora Pentas. The funnel-shaped body, 17, lying 

 below the last-named, is Rhizosolemia Cahjptra; the round section under it, 3, is 

 another Coscinodiscus, and the lineal body to the right of both, Grammatophora. 

 turgens. In the centre of the picture is a c^uadrangular body, Anaulus scalaris, 1 ; 

 the curiously formed dark body, 15, lying over it, is liemiaulus antarcticus. The 

 body shaped somewhat like a lance-point, 18, which lies below it, is Rhizosolemia 

 ornithoglossa. However, the most ornamental of all is the large, scarcely half- 

 visible section, 6, which bears the deserved name of the " wheel," fZ)Mco/jfea liota. 

 Below it, and shining through the oval section, 16, is Rap)hioleis fasciolata ; while 

 upon it lies a peculiar body apparently formed of bubbles or blistei's laid over 

 each other. This peculiar body does not belong to the group of the DiatomaceiB, 

 but to that of the Polytkalamia, a division of the Foramiiufcra. Such heaps of 

 shells of Polythalamia are found almost everywhere at the bottom of the sea, or 

 in connection with coats of DiatomaceiB. — Tr. 



