THE UNIVERSAL FAMILY PAPER FOR INTER-COMMUNICATIONS ON 



NATURAL HISTORY-POPULAR SCIENCE— THINGS IN GENERAL, 



Conducted by WILLIAM KIDD, of Hammersmith,— 



Author of the Familiar and Popular Essays on "Natural History;" "British Song 

 Birds;" " Birds of Passage ; " "Instinct and Eeason;" "The Aviary," &o. 



"the OBJECT op our work is to make men WISER, without obliging them to turn over folios and 



QUARTOS.— TO FURNISH MATTER FOR THINKING AS WELL AS READING."— EVELYN. 



No. 27.— 1852. 



SATURDAY. JULY 3. 



Price 3d. 



Or, in Monthly Parts, Price Is. Id. 



A WONDERFUL CHAPTER 



ON 



ANIMALCULES AND THEIR INSTINCTS. 



Minute and marvellous creations these ! 

 Infinite multitudes in every drop ! 

 Their lives all ecstacy, and quick cross motion. 



Montgomery. 



Of all the groups of animals, those of 

 the least consequence, one would think, 

 must be those that for the most part escape 

 the inquiring eye, unless aided by a micro- 

 scope. The infusories, or as they have been 

 also called animalcules, microscopic animals, 

 acrita, or indiscernibles, amorpha or without 

 form, are of this description. These won- 

 derful little creatures, though they are every- 

 where dispersed, remain like seeds, without 

 apparent life or motion, perhaps after ani- 

 mation has been suspended for years, till 

 they come in contact with some fluid, when 

 they are immediately reanimated, move about 

 in various directions, absorb their proper 

 nutriment, and exercise their reproductive 

 powers according to the law of their 

 several natures. Yet these little animals, 

 though in some respect they exhibit no slight 

 analogy to vegetables, are not only distin- 

 guished from them by their irritability, but 

 likewise by their organisation, and powers of 

 locomotion and voluntary action. Their 

 mode of reproduction, however, is not far 

 removed from that of some vegetables ; they 

 are spontaneously divisible, some longitu- 

 dinally and others transversely, and these 

 cuttings, if they may be so called, as in the 

 Hydra or common Polype, become separate 

 animals. They are also propagated by 

 germs, and some appear to be viviparous. 

 The species of Vibrio, found in diseased 

 wheat by M. Bauer, is oviparous, as is evi- 

 dent from his observations and admirable 

 figures. Lamarck indeed regards them as 

 having no volition, as taking their food by 

 absorption like plants ; as being without any 

 mouth, or internal organ ; in a word, as 

 transparent gelatinous masses, whose motions 



are determined not by their will, but by the 

 action of the medium in which they move ; 

 that they have neither head, eyes, muscles, 

 vessels, nerves, nor indeed any particular 

 determinable organ, whether for respiration, 

 generation, or even digestion. On account 

 of these supposed negative characters, they 

 were called by De Blainville, Agastria, or 

 stomachless, as having no intestines; but 

 Ehrenberg, who has studied them in almost 

 every climate, has discovered, by keeping 

 them in colored waters, that they are not the 

 simple animals that Lamarck and others 

 suppose, and that almost all have a mouth 

 and digestive organs, and that numbers of 

 them have many stomachs. Spallanzani, and 

 other writers that preceded Lamarck, had 

 observed that their motions evidently indi- 

 cated volition: this appeared from their 

 avoiding each other and obstacles in their 

 way ; from their changing their direction, and 

 going faster or slower as occasion required ; 

 from their passing suddenly from a state of 

 rest to motion without any external impulse ; 

 from their darting eagerly at particles of 

 infused substances ; from their incessantly 

 revolving on themselves without a change of 

 place ; from their course against the current ; 

 and from their crowding to shallow places of 

 the fluid in which they are : each species 

 seems also to exhibit a peculiar kind of 

 instinct. Lamarck thinks all this delusion ; 

 proceeding from errors in judgment, and the 

 result of prejudices inducing people readily 

 to believe what accords with their persua- 

 sions. But to apply this remark to such 

 observers as Spallanzani, &c, is drawing 

 rather largely on the credulity of his readers, 

 who might very justly change the tables and 

 apply it to himself, who is certainly as much 

 chained by system as any one can be. 

 Admitting that the observations of Spallan- 

 zani just stated record facts, it appears 

 clearly to follow from them that these ani- 

 mals have volition, and therefore cannot 

 properly be denominated apathetic, or insen- 

 sible. The fact that they almost all have a 



Vol. II. 



