98 The Cuneatic Characters of Babylon, Assyria, and Persia. 



float in the atmosphere ; but while he discovers numerous starch 

 grains wherever men are congregated, and finds that the lungs 

 of animals near towns contain a microscopic debris of all sorts 

 of substances, including even fragments of clothing, neither 

 he nor any one else has met with any number of infusorial eggs. 

 Nor can we even affirm that much progress has been made in 

 recognizing and distinguishing the various germs which diffe- 

 rent species are believed to produce. It moreover appears that 

 many observers have mistaken certain parasitic animalcules for 

 eggs of the creature they inhabit. At least, so M. Balbiani 

 tells us. According to this gentleman, certain acinetans be- 

 longing to the genus Sphcerophyra enjoy life under two 

 aspects. Fust, they appear as small cylinders, covered with 

 swimming cilia, and furnished with suckers and styles. In this 

 condition they swim freely, and devour their neighbours in the 

 usual way. Then comes a change in their affairs. They assume 

 a spherical form, strip off their ciliary vestment, but retain their 

 suckers, and wait quietly till touched by some roving animal- 

 cule, to which they cling. Gradually they work their way into 

 the interior of their prey, not breaking the tissue, but stretching 

 it before them as they advance, and suffering it to close behind 

 them, leaving only a minute channel by which their numerous 

 progeny subsequently escape. When once comfortably seated in 

 the middle of their involuntary hosts, their peregrinations cease, 

 and their vitality is chiefly manifested by the movements of the 

 contractile vesicle. As they grow, their family increases, and they 

 augment the size of the cavity in which they dwell, without 

 occasioning any apparent inconvenience to the paramecian or 

 oxytrichan which they have invaded. M. Balbiani states, that 

 he has noticed a single animalcule sheltering more than fifty of 

 these parasites at a time.* 



THE CUNEATIC CHARACTERS OF BABYLON, ASSY- 

 RIA, AND PERSIA—HOW THEY WERE FIRST 

 EXPLAINED. 



BY H. NOEL HUMPHEEYS. 



Long before the brilliant and successful guesses of Dr. Young, 

 and the subsequently triumphant labours of Champollion, had 

 led to the deciphering of the hieroglyphics of Egypt, a young* 

 and unknown German scholar, Grotefend, had succeeded in 

 reading several names in the cuneatic character of the Per- 



* In converting centigrade degrees into those of Fahrenheit, the nearest whole 

 numbers have been taken. 



