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Updated: June 5, 2025
In the South, I have seen a large area of water, acres in extent, uniformly agitated by a school of mullets apparently feeding upon some infusoria on the surface, and then instantly, as if upon a given signal, the fish would dive and the rippling cease. It showed a unity of action as of ten thousand spindles controlled by electricity.
Though in those microscopic Protophyta and Protozoa inhabiting the water the spores of algæ, the gemmules of sponges, and the infusoria generally we see locomotion produced by ciliary action; yet this locomotion, while rapid relatively to their sizes, is absolutely slow.
Ehrenberg has just discovered that an apparently sandy deposit, twenty feet in thickness, under the "Luneburgerheyde," is composed entirely of infusoria of a kind still living in the neighborhood of Berlin. This layer rests upon a brown deposit known to be ten feet in thickness. The latter consists, for one fifth of the depth, of pine pollen, which burns. The rest is of infusoria.
Her belief stopped short even of the Deist's faith in an Almighty Will. She saw in creation nothing but the inevitable development of material laws; and it seemed to her that there was quite as much hope of a heavenly world after death for the infusoria in the pool as for man in his pride and power.
Look on it as a poem and no more, for, after all, poetry is nonsense and justifies what would be considered impudence in prose. Can the sun be angry with the infusoria if the latter composes verses to her from the drop of water, where there is a multitude of them if you look through the microscope?
Furthermore, it has been found that experiments made in the manner described above answer well with most infusions; but that if you fill the vessel with boiled milk, and then stop the neck with cotton-wool, you 'will' have infusoria.
The relation of information to interest is still further illustrated by the case of the typical university professor or scientist. He is interested in certain objects of research infusoria, electrons, plant ecology, because he knows so much about them. His interest may be said to consist partly of the body of knowledge that he possesses.
No; this was not the calm irradiation of our ordinary lightning. There was unusual life and vigour: this was truly living light! In reality, it was an infinite agglomeration of coloured infusoria, of veritable globules of jelly, provided with a threadlike tentacle, and of which as many as twenty-five thousand have been counted in less than two cubic half-inches of water.
The more deeply located Infusoria and Mollusks must dwell in an endless twilight; for Humboldt has found, by experiment, that at a depth one hundred and ninety-two feet from the surface the amount of sunlight which can penetrate is equal only to one-half of the light of an ordinary candle one foot distant.
It is, however, a very singular fact, that, although Professor Ehrenberg knows many species of infusoria peculiar to Africa, he finds none of these in the dust which I sent him. On the other hand, he finds in it two species which hitherto he knows as living only in South America.
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