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Fragility, appearance, nothingness. If it were for our powers of self-detraction and forgetfulness, all the fairy world which surrounds and draws us would seem to us but a broken spectre in the darkness, an empty appearance, a fleeting hallucination. Appeared disappeared there is the whole history of a man, or of a world, or of an infusoria. Time is the supreme illusion.
From the 28th of May until the beginning of August, Professor Schulze continued uninterruptedly the renewal of the air in the flask, without being able, by the aid of the microscope, to discover any living animal or vegetable substance; although, during the whole of the time, observations were made almost daily on the edge of the liquid; and when, at last, the Professor separated the different parts of the apparatus, he could not find in the whole liquid the slightest trace of Infusoria or Confervæ, or of mould; but all three presented themselves in great abundance a few days after he had left the flask standing open.
There were moss and shining spots on the underside of the unplaned rafters, little green pools of infusoria stood on the ledge of the windows whose panes were at times suddenly clouded by mysterious unknown breaths from without or within.
In essence, it was a cluster of countless open-sea infusoria, of noctiluca an eighth of an inch wide, actual globules of transparent jelly equipped with a threadlike tentacle, up to 25,000 of which have been counted in thirty cubic centimeters of water.
"But, sir," said Conseil, "can you tell me what causes such an effect? for I suppose the water is not really turned into milk." "No, my boy; and the whiteness which surprises you is caused only by the presence of myriads of infusoria, a sort of luminous little worm, gelatinous and without colour, of the thickness of a hair, and whose length is not more than seven-thousandths of an inch.
Like the insects humming in the darkness, offer up your evening prayer. Be content to fade out of life without a murmur whenever the Master of life shall breathe upon your tiny flame! It is out of myriads of unknown lives that every clod of earth is built up. The infusoria do not count until they are millions upon millions. Accept your nothingness." Amen!
They are rabid stomachs that cleanse the waters of all animal life, digesting it in a vacuum of death. Even the bacteria and infusoria appear to flee from the liquid that envelops these ferocious solitudes. Ferragut passed many mornings contemplating their treacherous immovability, followed by deadly unfoldings the moment that their prey came down into the tank.
The last-named science teaches us also that a primitive form of soul-activity is already present even in the lowest animals, the single-celled primitive animals, Infusoria and Rhizopoda.
Tripoli formed of Infusoria. Chalk derived principally from Organic Bodies. Distinction of Fresh-water from Marine Formations. Genera of Fresh-water and Land Shells. Rules for recognising Marine Testacea. Gyrogonite and Chara. Fresh-water Fishes. Alternation of Marine and Fresh-water Deposits. Lym-Fiord.
He went farther, and said to himself, "If these really are the things that give rise to the appearance of spontaneous generation, I ought to be able to take a ball of this 'dusted' gun-cotton and put it into one of my vessels, containing that boiled infusion which has been kept away from the air, and in which no infusoria are at present developed, and then, if I am right, the introduction of this gun-cotton will give rise to organisms."
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