ANIMALCULES.-No. I.

WITHIN the last few years, a new world of living beings may be said to have opened upon our sight-a world, of the existence of which the ancients never dreamed, and which will long continue to surprise by new facts those who observe it in a series of well-conducted investigations. We allude to the world of microscopic animalcules.

In the hands of the naturalist, the microscope has become, like the telescope in the hands of the astronomer, a source of important information, a means of most interesting research; and philosophers, through the aid of this instrument, have succeeded in exploring the nature of beings far too minute for the unassisted eye to behold; but often of complex structure, and elaborately formed. Among those who stand foremost in the list of microscopic naturalists, Professor Ehrenberg takes the lead. It is not only in Europe, but in Asia and Africa, that this philosopher has assiduously studied the minute organic productions of nature; and the results of his persevering researches, during a period of many years, have been recently given to the world, in various scientific publications of great merit, as the matured fruit of deep inquiry. The following are among the most interesting of the general facts which are established by, or are deducible from Professor Ehrenberg's

labours.

Microscopic animalcules often possess an highly organized structure, and constitute two distinct classes, according to their structural peculiarities. Like other animals, they obey fixed laws of geographical distribution, groups and species having assigned limits of habitation. They abound both in the sea and in fresh water; they often give a colour to extensive volumes of water, and by the light which they develope occasion a peculiar phosphorescence of the sea; fishes in ponds are sometimes made sickly or killed by the alteration of the quality of the water occasioned by their presence, or by their decomposition after death; but that they give rise to any pestilential deseases in the human race, or in terrestrial animals, has never been demonstrated, though it may have been suspected. They do not sleep, at least they have never been observed in a state of repose which might be so called. They are found to form a peculiar sort of living earth, and forty-one thousand millions often

constitute the volume of a single cubic inch; the absolute number, therefore, of these animalcules far exceeds that of all other living creatures on the surface of our globe taken together. Were mass compared with mass, that is, the aggregate volume which the total of the animalcules existing throughout this globe would constitute, compared with the aggregate volume which the total of all other animals would constitute, it is not improbable that the volume of the former would preponderate. Their reproduction is perfectly astonishing; a single individual in some instances gives birth to millions in the space of a few hours. After their death, the precipitation and accumulation of their hard investments or outer coverings mixed up with calcareous or siliceous particles, produce layers of various earths and rocks, becoming consolidated by time into clays, flints, marbles, etc., in which the shape of these shells and their characters are perfectly distinguishable, so that the very species can be determined. The Turkish stone used for making hones, is a mass of the fossil exuvia of microscopic animalcules. In Sweden, on the shores of the lake Lettnaggsjon, near Urnea, a vast quantity of extremely fine pulverulent matter is found, much resembling flour in appearance, and called by the natives mountain meal (Borgmehl.) It is used as food, being mixed up with flour, and is nutritive. This mountain meal is ascertained by examination with a microscope to consist of nothing else than the shelly coverings of certain polygastric animalcules, which coverings, as the animals perish, accumulate from age to age, at the bottom of the waters, and form a deep stratum; this drying on the shore, or in places no longer covered by the water as formerly, assumes the appearance whence it has its name, and each particle is the relic of a microscopic animal. These beings, then, exercise a great and direct influence on inorganic nature. They exist as entozoa in living bodies, and are themselves infested with external parasites and also with entozoa. Like larger beings, they are affected by the agency of matter around them; their lightness permits them to be drifted by the gentlest currents, and to be even carried into the atmosphere. Some of these animalcules present wonderful changes of form; but these changes have certain limits, and are referable

They abound in all waters, various spe-, cies being the tenants of streams, pools, rivers, etc., of which they absolutely render every cubic inch teeming with life. Some species are far more common than others; but the rarer kinds may generally be procured by steeping dried grass or leaves in a vessel of water, and leaving it for a few days exposed to the influence of the sun and air, when the infusion will be found swarming with animalcules. A drop of this infusion, or of water from any pond or ditch, if put upon a thin slip of glass, and covered with any delicate film of talc, and viewed through a microscope of about four, five, or six hundred times magnifying power, and of one fourth of an inch focus, will then present an astonishing spectacle. A little practice in the management of the instrument, and also of the eye, is necessary; for experience greatly improves the eye in the use of the microscope.

The polygastric animalcules appear,

as far as researches have made us acquainted with them, to be divisible into two primary groups; one distinguished by the soft and shelless condition of the body; the other by the body being more or less protected by an extremely fine and transparent shell, which differs greatly in form in the various species; in some it is a simple transparent shield on the back; in others, the shell approaches that of a bivalve mollusk. To the accumulation of these shells we have already alluded. The forms of these animalcules are as various as the species, and many are perpetually changing their figure at pleasure. All are active, and they dance about in their native element with surprising energy, avoiding each other in their mazy movements, the larger pursuing the smaller, the smaller endeavouring to escape. The nature of their organs of locomotion here demands attention. In the globular monad, the smallest of known animalcules, no or-gans of locomotion have been satisfac-. torily demonstrated; the most powerful microscope fails to detect them, if they exist. M. F. Dujardin, however, asserts that in some he has perceived a few most minute and slender filaments proceeding from their bodies, which he supposes to be locomotive agents; other microscopic observers, however, do not appear to have seen them: indeed, he describes them as so minute and fine (the thirty thousandth of a millimetre

in diameter) as to require an instrument of very extraordinary powers, to present them to the eye.

Some, as the Proteus (amaba) belonging to the naked group, form for themselves locomotive organs at pleasure, and are thus perpetually exhibiting changes of figure. These temporary

oars are produced by the animal shooting out processes, or finger-like appendages, from different parts of its semifluid body, which are retracted, or which sink down, at will, others being again protruded, as in this sketch.

are ranged in its vicinity, and besides acting as organs of locomotion, are agents in the acquisition of food, they produce by their incessant vibration a current in the water, converging to the mouth, and hurrying along with it, either smaller animalcules or minute portions of vegetable matter, on which the creatures feed, and which, but for this singular provision, they could not otherwise obtain. The annexed sketch shows the disposition of the cilia, in the vorticella. It may here be

asked, What is the intimate structure of these cilia, and by what mechanism do they perform their rapid and unwearied movements? According to Ehrenberg, each fibril is governed by a muscle surrounding its base, having its fibres disposed in a radiating manner, which by their successive contractions give a rotatory motion to the fibril on which they act. There are, however, many reasons to lead us to doubt the correctness of this opinion; for it can be nothing but an opinion, inasmuch as it requires a good microscope to detect the cilia or fibrils themselves, and the most perfect instrument could not display such an apparatus for moving them, as that alluded to by Ehrenberg, which must be inconceivably minute. Besides, the supposition involving the existence of thousands of these muscles infers an organization far higher than that characterizing the acrita, and one indeed of great complexity. The fact is, that the subject is in utter obscurity; it is indeed ascertained beyond a doubt that the cilia are vibratile, that they move with great rapidity, but we know no more. In the little hydra, or freshwater polype, which is furnished with tentacular filaments, capable of vigorous movements, and by means of which it seizes its prey, no trace of muscular

fibres is discoverable either in these, or in the body of the animal itself, by the most powerful microscopes; and we ask in vain the cause of such contractile and motive power. Yet the hydra can creep along, dilate or compress its body, and twist itself in various directions. The same observations apply to the coral polypes which expand and contract, and move their star-like or flowerlike radii of tentacles, but in which no muscular fibres are perceptible. We are, indeed, obliged to conclude that the power of contraction, expansion, and motion, is not exclusively resident in muscular structures, but that it also belongs to, or is connected with organizations of a very different character, and of which the physiologist has yet every thing to learn. The gelatinous structure of the sponge has not been found to exhibit any contractile or expansive movements, though from the circulation of water through the channels which traverse its substance, such may be suspected. But when we come to the fungia, the lowest of the polypes, we find the gelatinous film which invests a calcareous laminated mass (resembling a mushroom) to be contractile, and when rudely touched to retire as if for safety between the plates of the calcareous support. Here then we have the power of contraction and expansion in a semifluid gelatinous, but still vitalized film. The movements, then, of the cilia of the polygastric animalcules, and the changes of figure which many of these creatures themselves assume, do not necessarily involve the existence of muscles, or arrangements of muscular fibres.

THE GUNPOWDER PLOT.

M.

PART II. PREPARATIONS OF THE CONSPIRATORS.

WHILE the mass of the Romanists were despairing, there was one ardent mind which was not appalled: Robert Catesby determined to rescue his party from their supposed oppressions, and to re-establish Popery as the national religion of England. With this in view, he conceived the horrid design of destroying, by a secret and sudden stroke, the king and queen, the lords and commons. This was to be done by undermining the parliament house, and blowing it up with gunpowder, on the day of the opening of the session. The dreadful purpose appears to have been formed in the spring of the year 1604.

Catesby was a gentleman of good family. Several of his ancestors had represented the county of Warwickshire in parliament. In his early life he recanted Popery, in which he had been brought up; but, about the year 1598, he resumed that profession, and devoted himself most zealously to the conversion of Protestants. He had been engaged in several treasonable undertakings during the reign of Elizabeth, which had involved him in danger and trouble, and pointed him out to the government as a man of desperate character.

The first person to whom Catesby communicated his intention was John Wright, a gentleman of Lincolnshire, his intimate friend. He and his brother Christopher, who afterwards became a party to the plot, had been actively concerned in the earl of Essex's rebellion. Thomas Winter, another of the original conspirators, was a Worcestershire gentleman. He had taken a prominent part in the treasonable intrigues of the Papists during Elizabeth's reign, had conducted the negotiation with the Spanish king, previous to the accession of James, and was in great repute for his talents and accomplishments, his extensive knowledge of men of influence in the courts of Europe, and his aptitude for the management of daring and difficult enterprises.

Catesby, John Wright, and Winter, met at Lambeth. It was there that Catesby revealed his plan. Winter started some objections, which were soon overruled, and it was agreed that he should go over to Flanders, to see Velasco, the constable of Castile, who was on his way to England, for the purpose of concluding a treaty between this country and Spain. The object of the visit was, to endeavour to secure his interposition with king James, on behalf of his Roman Catholic subjects; that the penal laws might be repealed, and Papists admitted to an equality of rights with Protestants. The mission proved unsuccessful, and Winter returned to London, bringing with him Guido or Guy Fawkes.

of Fawkes. He speaks of him as a man of great piety, of exemplary temperance, of mild and cheerful demeanour, an enemy of broils and disputes, a faithful friend, and remarkable for his punctual attendance upon religious observances." This is evidently the language of partiality; yet the subsequent history will probably convince the reader that Fawkes was rather a fanatic than a ruffian.

An important addition was made to the traitorous band in the person of Thomas Percy, one of the gentlemen pensioners, a relative of the earl of Northumberland, and steward of his estates. His mind had been long brooding over the presumed wrongs and grievances of his party. His first words, when he met the others at Catesby's lodgings were, "Well, gentlemen, shall we always talk, and never do any thing ?” Catesby whispered to him that something was about to be done, and proposed that they should previously take a solemn oath of secrecy. A few days afterwards they met for the purpose, in a lonely house in the fields, near the spot now occupied by the church of St. Clement Danes, Strand. There they severally took the following oath, in the most solemn manner, on their knees: "You shall swear by the blessed Trinity, and by the sacrament you now propose to receive, never to disclose, directly or indirectly, by word or circumstance, the matter to be proposed to you to keep secret, nor desist from the execution thereof until the rest shall give you leave." The whole project was then disclosed to Percy and Fawkes, who had been hitherto unacquainted with it; and they then adjourned to an upper room of the house, where they heard mass, and took the sacrament from father Gerard, a jesuit missionary, in confirmation of their vow; thus seeking to connect the sanction of religion with their diabolical design. It was afterwards affirmed, that Gerard was not made acquainted with the purpose for which they met. This may be reasonably doubted. The probability is, to say the least, that he understood them to be engaged in some plot or conspiracy; and in that age of treasons, no priest was unwilling to sanctify such undertakings by sacramental solemnities.