1833.] 



Prof. Ehrenherg on Fossil Infusoria. 



149 



ancient world ! While our habitations are sometimes built of the solid 

 aggregate of millions of microscopic shells,—wbile, as we have seen, 

 our apartments are heated and lighted with the wreck of mighty forests 

 that covered the primeval valleys,— the chaplet of beauty shines with 

 the very sepulchres in which millions of animals are entombed ! 

 Thus has death become the handmaid and the ornament of life. Would 

 that it were also its instructor and its guide !" 



In our extracts from other works, we generally have a regard to 

 what concerns the science and literature of the East : but tliere are 

 subjects (and this is one) of such universal interest, that we do not 

 think w^e should chronicle the progress of science faithfully or satis- 

 factorily, even as Eastern Reviewers, unless we unfolded them in our 

 pages. The following acco.unt is therefore republished from a new 

 scientific work expressly devoted to the proceedings of the European 

 continental 6'aya?J5.— Editor Madras JoimiaL] 



In the month of April of this year I communicated to the Academy* 

 a remarkable fact relative to the infusoria of the mineral springs of 

 Carlsbad, namely that they appeared to be the same species as those 

 met with on the French coast of the Atlantic and in the Baltic. For 

 the knowledge of this fact i was indebted to the kindness of the pro- 

 prietor of the porcelain manufactory in Pirkenhammer, near Carls- 

 bad, M. Fischer, who, at my request, brought for me to Berlin some 

 of the water containing living animalcules. In order to follow up the 

 examination more closely and more extensively, I requested another 

 supply, which I received a fortnight ago in good condition. At the 

 same time Ivi. Fischer informed me, in a letter dated 20lh June, that 

 he himself had made a curious observation. He had remarked that the 

 Kieselguhrf (announced by M. Radig in the Jahrbiicher fiir Deutsch- 

 lands Heilquellen, &c., edited by MM. von Greefe and Dr. Kalisch, 

 1836, p. 193), which occurs in the peat-bog of Franzensbad, near Eger 

 in Bohemia, consists almost entirely of the sheilds of Naviculse, and ap- 

 pears to owe its origin to the action of volcanic heat on the bottom of 

 the sea. M. Fischer sent me, together with this information, a piece of 

 this fossil siliceous body, originally rather more than 2 inches long, 



* Compare the Report of the Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Berlin, 183S, ppv 

 36, 5(i, and 55 ; and Wiegraann's Archiv. for Natural History, 1836, p, 240. 



t [A kind of siliceous paste ; from Kiesel, 5?7ex, and Guhv, a term used in niiuing for 

 Mater carrying dissolved minerals when iu a thick liquid state. — W. F.] 



