ANIMALCULES IN SEA-WATEli. 355 
about a week; these animalcules, in still water, 
could not accomplish the same distance in less 
than 8935 years. 
Few circumstances among the minuter works 
of creation, have struck me with so much surprise, 
as the appearance of these animalcules, occurring 
in such myriads, in a sea perpetually covered with 
ice,—exposed to an average temperature fifteen 
degrees below the freezing point,—and subject to 
be frozen, on some occasions at least, during every 
month of the year. 
The vastness of their numbers, and their ex¬ 
ceeding minuteness, are circumstances, discovered 
in the examination of these animalcules, of un¬ 
common interest. In a drop of water examined 
by a power of 28.224, (magnified superficies), 
there were fifty in number, on an average, in each 
square of the micrometer glass, of * J 3 th of an inch 
in diameter ; and as the drop occupied a circle on 
a plate of glass containing 529 of these squares, 
there must have been in this single drop of water, 
taken out of the yellowish-green sea, in a place 
by no means the most discoloured, about 26’,450 
animalcules. Hence, reckoning sixty drops to a 
dram, there would be a number in a gallon of 
water, exceeding, by one-half, the amount of the 
population of the whole globe ! It gives a power- 
fid conception of the minuteness and wonders of 
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