REVIEWS. 
25 
Jidjiffas. 
A Synopsis of the British Diatomace^e ; with Remarks on their 
Structure, Functions, and Distribution ; and Instructions for Collecting 
and Preserving Specimens. Vol. I., with 31 Plates By the Rev. 
William Smith, F.L.S. The Plates by Tuffen West. London. 1853. 
Price £1 Is. 
About seventeen years ago, an expensive and elaborately-illustrated folio 
work was published in Germany. Its author was Christian Gottfried 
Chrenberg, of Berlin, who had been already, by common consent, placed 
at the head of the investigators of the minutest forms of animal life, and 
whose fame as a microscopist had extended throughout Europe. 
We shall not stop to criticise the views contained in the 11 Infusions- 
thierchen.” Its author had a vast field before him, hitherto almost totally 
untrodden; for, however popular may have been the study of those 
infinitesimal beings which swarm in infusions of organic substances, and 
however much the faculty of wonder had been fed by the early revelations 
of the microscope, yet the whole attention of the older observers of these 
living atoms was directed to their external forms and habits, while of their 
internal structure there was, literally, almost nothing known till Ehrenberg 
engaged in their investigation. Ehrenberg had, therefore, nothing to 
fall back upon—he had no clue left by previous explorers to guide him 
through the untrodden paths of the vast region on which he had entered. 
Can it be any wonder, then, that he frequently went astray, and that sub¬ 
sequent researches, with all the advantages derivable from his previous 
labours, and from the unequalled excellence of more modern microscopes, 
should have shown the untenableness of many of his positions, and have 
drawn forth from the territory on which he first planted the standard of 
scientific discovery new treasures, not even dreamt of by its own Co¬ 
lumbus ? 
One great revolution which modern researches has effected in that im¬ 
mense tribe of organisms associated by Ehrenberg under the common 
name of “Animalcules of Infusion” is, the total abstraction from it of a 
very numerous class of forms, and the allocation of this class to the vege¬ 
table kingdom as its rightful territory. 
Among the beings which have been thus dissociated from the true 
Infusorial Animalcules are a set of microscopic organisms, of very various 
form, consisting essentially of a delicate vegetable cell, enclosed in a little 
VOL. II. C 
