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The towns of Berlin in Europe and of Richmond in the United States are actually built upon ground called "infusorial earth," composed almost entirely of valves of these minute diatoms which have accumulated to a thickness of more than eighty feet! Those under Berlin are fresh-water forms, and must have lived in a lake, while those of Richmond belong to salt-water forms.

Innumerable experiments, as well as phenomenal facts, attest the truth of this genesis of life, while the researches of Professor Bastian and other eminent materialists, made in infusorial and cryptogamic directions, confirm rather than discredit it. The fact that it appears for the first time in this ancient Hebrew text can detract nothing from its value as a scientific statement.

Numerous forms of such animals have been described by Ehrenberg, Dujardin, H. James Clark, and other writers on the Infusoria. Indeed, in another infusion of hay in which my Heteromita lens occurred, there were innumerable such infusorial animalcules belonging to the well-known species Colpoda cucullus.

It came as did all other plant-life, in the first instance, from geographical conditions those favoring the development of primordial germs just as the different organic infusions, experimentally prepared by the physiologist, produce their respective forms of infusorial life; each distinctive form depending on the chemical conditions of the infusion at the time the microscopic examination is made.

Notwithstanding the fact that you destined him for my cousin, the little curly creature always impressed me as being a stray specimen of an otherwise extinct type of intellectual Lacrymatoria. Is he really dead? Peace to his infusorial soul! Who had the courage to write and break the melancholy tidings to you?

"Not at all dangerous, at least not worth speaking of," replied the manager; "nitro-glycerine by itself is indeed very dangerous, being easily exploded by concussion or mere vibration; but when mixed with infusorial earth and thus converted into dynamite, it is one of the safest explosives in existence not quite so safe, indeed, as gun-cotton, but much more so than gunpowder.

Here the distinction between different genera and species, and the provision that was made for the perpetuation of different races, are prominently presented; while the production, in the first instance, not of an "infusorial point" or "microscopic monad," but of a living organism capable of multiplying its kind, is expressly declared; and every race is traced up to that primary organism, in perfect consistency with the only law, whether of vegetable or animal reproduction, which is known to be in operation at the present day.

Among the lower forms of animal life, the infusorial animalculae we have already spoken of throw off certain portions, or break themselves up in various directions, sometimes transversely or sometimes longitudinally; or they may give off buds, which detach themselves and develop into their proper forms. There is the common fresh-water Polype, for instance, which multiplies itself in this way.

He then turned his attention to the mercury bath, and found on examination that the surface of the mercury was almost always covered with a very fine dust. He found that even the mercury itself was positively full of organic matters; that from being constantly exposed to the air, it had collected an immense number of these infusorial organisms from the air.

: These, while presenting the most varied and diverse forms of infusorial life, are nevertheless the most constant and abundant type. They abound more or less in all organic infusions. Ehrenberg, however, holds that they are no more animal than vegetal forms.