A General History of Animalcules, Including Their Appearances and Localities, and the Methods of Capturing, Viewing, and Preserving Them: Illustrated by Five Hundred Engraved Drawings

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Whittaker and Company, Ave-Maria Lane, 1843 - Animalcules - 83 pages
 

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Page 64 - That observer remarks, that this accounts for " the astonishing great fertility or capacity of increase of microscopic animals, according to which an imperceptible corpuscle can become, in four days, one hundred and seventy billions, or as many single individual animalcules as contained in two cubic feet of the stone from the polishing slate of Bilin. This increase takes place by voluntary division, and this is the character which separates animals from plants. It is true that the gemmation in plants,...
Page 63 - These shell-like coverings are often found in large masses, covering many miles of the earth's surface, and occur, when indurated and mixed with argillaceous and other earths, in the form of siliceous slate-rocks, &c.
Page 2 - In the clearest waters," says an able writer, " and also in the strongly-troubled acid and salt fluids of the various zones of the earth ; in springs, rivers, lakes, and seas; in the internal moisture of living plants and animal bodies ; and probably, at times, carried about in the...
Page 7 - ... the much smaller animalcules appear (from being passively elevated with the watery .vapour) floating in a live state in the atmosphere, and sometimes perhaps mixed with dust. 22. In general the Infusoria maintain themselves pretty uniformly against all external influences, as do larger organised bodies. It is true that they sometimes consume strong poisons without immediate injury, but not without an after-effect. 23. The weight of the invisible Infusoria, light as it is, is yet calculable, and...
Page 5 - ... millions to fill the narrow space of one square inch. And yet, as small as they are, the microscope reveals to us their existence, their spontaneous motion, and their external and internal structures; it also makes known the fact that these minute living beings are extremely reproductive and "constitute the chief proportion of living bodies upon the face of the earth.
Page 62 - ... measure; indeed, so minute must be many of the young of these Infusoria that they cannot be recognized by our microscopes. Again, others individually so small as to be almost invisible, form, when aggregated, green, red, yellow, blue, brown, and black colored masses of great extent. Thus the clusters in some species in the families Vorticella and Bacillaria increase to such an extent that they attain a size of several inches, resembling Polypi. The greater number of Polygastria are found in fresh...
Page 6 - ... 15. The invisible Infusoria are sometimes hurtful, by causing the death of fish in ponds, deterioration of clear water, and boggy smells ; but not, as has been supposed, in giving rise to malaria, plague, and other maladies.
Page 8 - Infusoria has led to a more distinct and conclusive notion of animal organisation generally, and the limits which circumscribe the animal form, from which all plants and minerals, that want the animal organic system, are distinctly separated. 30. Finally, it results from these inquiries, that experience shows an unfathomableness of organic creations, when attention is directed to the smallest space, as it does of stars, when reverting to the most immense. Under the class Infusoria Ehrenberg embraced...
Page 5 - ... than 41,000 millions of single animals exist, and constitute, most likely, the chief proportion of living bodies upon the face of the earth. 10. The Infusoria are the most reproductive of organised bodies. 11. From one of the known propagative modes of the Infusoria — that is...
Page 7 - munis calx e vermibus :' either to maintain or deny 'omnissilex, oruue ferrumve, vermibus,' would be at the present moment unjust. 26. The direct observations as yet known, upon the theory of ' generatio primitiva,' are wanting in necessary strictness. Those observers who profess to have seen the sudden origin of the minutest Infusoria from elementary substances, have quite overlooked the compound structure of these organic bodies. 27. The frequent wonderful changes of form of many Infusoria are...

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