Microscopic Life in the Ocean at the South Pole. 569 



4. That the dust did not necessarily and evidently come from 

 Africa, as being the nearest land, although the wind blew from 

 thence when the dust fell ; for this reason, that no exclusively 

 African forms are among it. 



5. That as Himantidium Papilio, a very marked form, has hitherto 

 occurred only in Cayenne (see the Mikroskopische Leben in Sud- 

 und Nord-Amerika, plate 2. fig. 2.), and as the Surirella is also pro- 

 bably an American form, only two conclusions present themselves ; 

 either that the dust was raised in South America into the upper 

 strata of air, and brought by a change of the current in another di- 

 rection, or Himantidium Papilio, together with Surirella, likewise 

 occur elsewhere, namely in Africa. 



Review of the Results of these Investigations . 



1. Not only is there, as resulted from the former observations 

 of the author (vide d. Mikroskopische Leben in Amerika, Spitz- 

 bergen, &c), an invisible minute creation in the neighbourhood 

 of the Pole, where the larger animals can no longer subsist, but 

 a similar creation is highly developed at the South Pole. 



2. Even the ice and snow of the South Polar Sea is rich in 

 living organisms, contending successfully with the extremity of 

 cold. 



3. The microscopic living forms of the South Polar Sea contain 

 great riches hitherto wholly unknown, frequently of very elegant 

 shape, since no less than seven peculiar genera have been discovered, 

 of which some contain several, one as many as seven species. 



4. The forms collected in the year 1842, near Victoria Land, 

 were capable of being examined in an almost fresh state in Berlin 

 in May 1844, which shows how long preservation is possible. 



5. The ocean is not only populated at certain localities and in 

 inland seas or on the coasts, with invisible living atoms, but is pro- 

 portionately thickly crowded with life everywhere in the clearest 

 state of the sea- water and far from the coasts. 



6. Hitherto but one perfectly microscopic form from the high 

 sea was known, and even that from the neighbourhood of the coast, 

 namely the Astasia oceanica, which Von Chamisso had observed ; 



