330 MEMOIR OF DR. HARVEY. 



of the snow. The dab of carmine in Greville's book is a painter's 

 flourish. So also (I suspect) the brilliant picture in Ross's 

 Arctic Voyage. Where I have seen it in Switzerland, it was 

 always very faint, but if you stooped down, scraped the surface 

 with your hand, and gathered a thin superficial stratum, this 

 was generally, when pressed together, a deeper colour. 



I hope all this will suit your Parable, and shall be very glad 

 to read it when it comes, and to find this more minute seed than 

 " mustard seed " grown up into a flourishing tree, &c. 



You ask, can chemistry produce vegetable life ? I do not 

 think so. It can foster production, and incite growth, but 

 (I hold) there must be a germ to begin with, at least so far as I 

 know. The nearest approach that chemistry has made to 

 simulate organic substances is the artificial perfumes and spices 

 formed out of fousel oil, bat the oil was there to begin with. 

 The day is yet future when you can send to the chemist your 

 rough carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen, and tell him to 

 send you back a pound of beef-steak. I believe he would find it 

 as hard to make a Nostoc out of the elements. . . . 



I mean to send you two pamphlets on the Revivals. They 

 have not come in my way, so I have no strong views respecting 

 them. Good and bad, in origin and result, seems the sum of the 

 matter. 



Trinity College, Dublin, December 3. 



All's well that ends well. I just write a line to say that 

 you may take as long a shot as you please at the Protococcus. 

 Ross, you know, discovered it, when sailing along the Arctic 

 coasts: he saw the cliffs of snow for miles painted red, landed to 

 examine, and found the snow for several feet in depth full of 

 Protococcus. 



I have a little red atom from the Red Sea, said to colour the 

 waters when abundant. But I sailed from Suez to Aden, 

 through the bluest water — no trace of red. Thus men travel 

 from Dan to Beersheba and see nothing. But I have seen the 

 sea (near Penang) looking like thick green pea-soup, also from 

 a microscopic Alga. 



Yours truly, 



W. H. H. 



