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It is clear much time must have been required for the accumulation of strata to which countless generations of Diatomaceae have contributed their remains; and these discoveries lead us naturally to suspect that other deposits, of which the materials have been supposed to be inorganic, may in reality be composed chiefly of microscopic organic bodies.
They abound in rivulets, lakes, and ponds in England and other countries, and are termed Diatomaceae by those naturalists who believe in their vegetable origin. The subject alluded to has long been well- known in the arts, under the name of infusorial earth or mountain meal, and is used in the form of powder for polishing stones and metals.
Were the beautiful volute and cone shells of the Eocene epoch, and the gracefully sculptured ammonites of the Secondary period, created that man might ages afterwards admire them in his cabinet? Few objects are more beautiful than the minute siliceous cases of the diatomaceae: were these created that they might be examined and admired under the higher powers of the microscope?
And once more, why are those strange microscopic atomies, the Diatomaceae and Infusoria, which fill every stagnant pool; which fringe every branch of sea-weed; which form banks hundreds of miles long on the Arctic sea-floor, and the strata of whole moorlands; which pervade in millions the mass of every iceberg, and float aloft in countless swarms amid the clouds of the volcanic dust; why are their tiny shells of flint as fantastically various in their quaint mathematical symmetry, as they are countless beyond the wildest dreams of the Poet?
That dusty cloud which shakes off in the water as you move the weed, under the microscope would be one mass of exquisite forms Desmidiae and Diatomaceae, and what not?
We may imagine that, after a lapse of many years or centuries, changes took place in the direction of the marine currents, favouring at one time a supply in the same area of siliceous, and at another of calcareous matter in excess, giving rise in the one case to a preponderance of Globigerinae, and in the other of Diatomaceae.
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