446 
IMPORTANCE OF THINGS MINUTE. 
When we descry an insect, smaller than a mitC) 
moving with agility across the paper on which we 
write, we feel as incapable of forming any distinct 
conception of the minutiae of the muscidar fibres* 
which effect these movements, and of the still 
smaller vessels by which they are nourished, a® 
we are of fully apprehending the magnitude of 
the universe. We are more perplexed in at' 
tempting to comprehend the organization of the 
minutest Infusoria,* than that of a whale ; and one 
* Ehrenberg has ascertained that the Infusoria, which hav® 
heretofore been considered as scarcely organized, have an interna^ 
structure resembling that of the higher animals. He has discO' 
vered in them muscles, intestines, teeth, different kinds of gland®’ 
eyes, nerves, and male and female organs of reproduction, d® 
finds that some are born alive, others produced by eggs, and 
some multiplied by spontaneous divisions of their bodies into t'*’*’ 
or more distinct animals. Their powers of reproduction are 
great, that from one individual (Hydatina senta) a million wet® 
produced in ten days ; on the eleventh day four millions, and 
the twelfth sixteen millions. The most astonishinar result of 
observations is, that the size of the smallest coloured spots on tn 
body of Monas Termo, (the diameter of which is only of 
Tswijrr a line, and that the thickness of the skin of the st®' 
mach may be calculated at from to ® 
This skin must also have vessels of a still smaller size, the diw®^ 
sions of which are too minute to be ascertained. Ahhandlv'nil^’' 
der Academie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1831. 
Ehrenberg has described and figured more than 500 species o 
these Animalcules ; many of them are limited to a certain nun‘b®‘ 
of vegetable infusions ; a few are found in almost every infnsio*’' 
Many vegetables produce several species, some of which are 
pagated more readily than others in each particular infus*‘^'’j. 
The familiar case of the rapid appearance and propagation ® 
animalcules in pepper water will suffice to illustrate the rest. 
