THE PEACOCK BUTTERPLY. 125 
order, the sudden overflowings of rivers with red or 
bloody water which have taken place, without any 
previous rain of that colour ; or of lakes and stagnant 
waters which have been suddenly or gradually colour- 
ed, without any preceding red rain. But we may men- 
tion, that modern discovery has led to a belief, that all 
these can be accounted for as arising from the water 
containing innumerable animalcule, of the ordercall- 
ed by naturalists infusory animals. In the year1797, 
Girod Chantron observed a pond in France to be of 
a blood-red colour. He examined it accurately, and 
found, that the water, which appeared to be of a 
brilliant red colour, the shade of which was between 
cinnabar and carmine, was not itself actually red, 
but assumed this appearance from innumerable ani- 
maleule, which were not visible to the naked eye, 
but which could be distinctly seen by the aid of a 
microscope.* Captain Scoreshy mentions, that, in 
1820, he observed the water of the Greenland Sea 
striped alternately with green and blue, and that 
those particularcolours were produced by animalculee, 
of such extreme minuteness, that he reckoned, in a 
single drop of water 26,450 animalcules ; hence, 
reckoning 60 drops to a drachm, there would be in a 
gallon a number equal to one half of the population 
of the globe. This coloured water, to the extent of 
tix degrees of latitude, formed one-fourth of the sur- 
* Bullet de Sc. Nat. a. 6. 
