pears, as if a fine thread had been cast | tions, if they have any ?--what of the one around the body and gradually tightened. will which before governed its motions? The animal gives a rebellious kick or two And, above all, what are we to think of during the process; but this constriction this species of vicarious or deputed immorgoes on until the animal is nearly nipped tality? * There seems to be no natural in two. There appears at what was the death, as before remarked; the normal tail-end the semblance of a mouth; the termination and destiny seems to be, that whole body struggles violently once more, each class shall furnish living food for the and, lo! two young creatures are the more powerful races. I have observed result; arising not by way of ordinary them with prolonged care; yet, though generation, but by spontaneous division I have seen them destroyed by accident, into two of the old animal. On their or by their congeners, I have never seen release, they seem to give their tails a any thing at all resembling natural death; triumphant wriggle, and part in opposite unabated activity subsists up to the time directions without further leave-taking. Mr. Gosse speaks of having once seen this process in a trachelius, which lasted two hours. I have frequently seen the entire process completed in less than half an hour from the first appearance of constriction.

This mode of increase is very general amongst the infusoria, and a very antimalthusian process it is. Professor Rymer Jones calculates that a single paramœcium will produce in a month the inconceivable number of 268,435,456 new beings. There are some species, however, very much more prolific than this, of which I do not see any specimen in our present water. Thus the Gonium Pectorale consists apparently of four larger globules and twelve smaller ones: when it is mature it splits in four symmetrical parts, which very soon supply their full complement of globules, and divide again in like manner. Still more remarkable is the G. Pulvinatum, which appears like a square bit of membrane, divided by lines into sixteen smaller squares; and at these lines the original animal divides into sixteen others. In general there does not appear to be any absolute rule as to the direction of the fission; some species divide transversely, some longitudinally, and some in both ways. When there is any special apparatus noticeable in the adult there may be observed, during the progress of the division, a gradual development of a duplicate apparatus, which is to be the portion of one of the resultant animals. Thus in the Nassula, which is furnished at one side with a rim of teeth, a similar rim is seen to be developed at a corresponding point on the other side during the division, which is accomplished exact ly like that of the leucophrys. What becomes of the individuality of these creatures?-what of their sensations or emo

*This kind of perpetuity of existence is not entirely confined to animals of microscopic dimensions. The tail of the nais, one of the annelida, enjoys the same pseudo immortality, accidents apart. Müller gives the following account of the process: "The young Nais Proboscidea is composed of fourteen segments only. During its growth an increase of these segments takes place at the caudal extremity, and after a time, a part of the new segments begins to be separated, by a constriction, from the rest of the worm. Long before the complete division, however, takes place, new segments are formed by the parent animal at the constricted part; these new segments in their turn begin to be cut off from the body of the old worm, while others are produced above them. In this way we have sometimes presented to our observation, a parent worm with three young ones, still forming part of one system, which has itself been developed from a separated part of a former system."

understood with limitations. I ought not to overThis must be taken of course cum grano, and look the evidences of the death of the loricated or shell-covered animalcules even in so cursory a sketch. The following, from Prof. Rymer Jones, will be found of interest: "Delicate as these shells are, and requiring the most accurate examination, even with a good microscope, to detect their presence, we shall be surprised to find that they play an important part in nature, making up by their immense accumulation, for their diminutive size. We have before us, while writing this, a specimen of pulverulent matter, collected from the shores of Lake Lettuaggsjon, two miles and a half from Urnea in Sweden, which from its extreme fineness resembles flour; this has long been known by the natives of the region, where it is plentiful, by the name of Bergmehl, or mountain meal; and is used by them, mixed up with flour, as an article of food, experience having taught them that it is highly nutritive. On examination with the microscope, the Bergmehl is found to consist entirely of the shells of loricated infusoria, which having been accumulating from age to age at the bottom of the waters in which the living animals are found, form a stratum of considerable thickness. Nor is this all, for when agglomerated and mixed up with siliceous and calcareous particles, these exuvia become consolidated by time into masses of flint and marble, in which the char

acters of the shells are perfectly distinguishable, so that even the species of the animalcules to which they originally belonged is easily made out."

when youth is renewed by one old one be- | little creature it is; and we may find that coming two or more young ones. its death is not less instructive than its life.

The peculiar fitness of this arrangement will become manifest if you consider well what is the province and function of all this teeming life. It is to turn back again the stream of constantly decomposing animal and vegetable matter into its higher channels. There are what may be properly called the herbivora and the carnivora amongst the lowest infusoria: these feed respectively upon the debris of vegetable and animal decomposition, and reconvert it into living structure, proper for the food of the higher orders; these, in their turn, are the prey of still larger and stronger races, which are finally food for the fishes, etc., and thus for man. All this object would apparently be defeated were these minute creatures to die natually and be again decomposed, as are the higher animals. Violent death, therefore, is the rule in these cases.

What becomes of the countless billions of animalculæ in a small pond, when it is dried up by the heat of summer? Do they perish? or what is their condition? This is not a superfluous question; for in a very short time again, after a rain, the pond is found to teem as before with life. Their dust appears to be susceptible of life again, after complete drying-a phenomenon which might appear incredible, but that we have a direct method of proving its possibility.

Now take one of these slips, on which there is a dry and dead daphnia; dead we must call it, for, on putting it under the glass, all is still. The heart can be detected even yet, but is perfectly motionless; the eye is dull and shriveled, and the legs and antennæ are crumpled together like the limbs of a dead fly: in short, look where you will, you see nothing like life. But now, add to it a drop of water, and observe the change; very soon, when the tissues have got completely moistened, you will notice a slight action, first in the legs, then in the tentacles, which resume their living appearance; and then, by degrees, the life will diffuse itself through the whole body, and you will see heart, lungs, and intestine in action, as vigorous as ever. I do not know any phenomenon of life more suggestive of curious thought and speculation than this, that a portion of dried and brittle tissue, from which all evidence of life has departed for days, should be able to resume its complicated functions under the stimulus of water. I am not aware that it has been observed before, in animals of so high an organization as these crustaceans. Long ago, Ehrenberg had observed it with regard to the rotifera, and stated that he had kept them in a dry state for, I believe, three years, and Here are three or four slips of glass, afterwards revived them by water. I can on each of which a few days ago I placed readily believe this, for I have so frequenta small fresh-water crustacean-the daph-ly repeated the experiments for shorter nia, or water-flea; the water has dried up, and the little creature is dry too and dead: touch one of them with the point of a needle, and you will find it splinter like a bit of burnt paper. Now, here is a living specimen, and a very beautiful object it is for the lower powers of the microscope, with its elaborate eyes, its long branched and bearded tentacles, and its whole internal economy plainly visible through its delicately transparent coverings. You see its heart beating there near the dorsal surface, and the blood, the motion of which is marked by granules, circulating through every part of the body, and especially towards that beautiful apparatus of branchiæ, or lungs, which are attached to the legs; so providing that the energy of respiration is always proportionate to the amount of bodily action. A most vivacious and interesting

periods that I feel no doubt whatever of their essential accuracy.

Recurring to our drop of pond-water: whilst you wonder at the ceaseless activity of these innumerable creatures, you can not fail to admire the variety of the means made use of to obtain progression. In the monads it would seem to be due to the probosci-form appendages;* in the volvoces the same agency, multiplied many fold, seems to be brought in action. In the vibrionidæ, of which you may see here numerous thread-like specimens wriggling about, the progression is like that of a

*These are calculated by Mr. Dujardin as be ing not more than one thirty-thousandth of a millimeter in diameter, which is about one nine-hundifficult of detection by the most powerful instrudred-thousandth of an inch; consequently rather ment. No wonder that differences of opinion exist as to their nature and uses.

in the place of the Eastern counties, is moved up to the Durham coast, and is, moreover, greatly diminished. Lo! while speaking of these alterations, they have been proceeding, so that another and a totally diverse outline is now presented. A great excavation takes the place of Dorset; Kent is immensely prolonged; the bladder has quite disappeared, etc.; but it is impossible to follow these changes, which are ever going on without a moment's intermission, and without the slightest recognizable rule or order... Individuals vary greatly in dimensions; this specimen is about one one-hundred

I have seen not more than one tenth as large as this, and some twice as large."*

Here is another beautiful object, just visible as a speck to the naked eye; it is a volvox globator. A lens of moderate power will show you whence it derives its generic name. Under a good microscope it appears as a delicate green transparent globe, studded with ciliæ, by means of which it revolves rapidly through the water. In its interior you may see other smaller volvoces, and still within these the gemmules of a third generation. But this is not a single animal, as it might appear; but a compound monad, strange as it may seem. "It was Ehrenberg (says Prof. Jones) who first made the discovery that these beautiful living globes were not, as had until then been universally believed, single animalcules, producing gemmules in the interior of their transparent bodies, which, on arriv

worm or eel in water. In a great proportion of the infusoria, vibratile ciliæ are the agents in locomotion. These, which are described by Ehrenberg as minute hair-like processes arising from a thick bulbous base, are often so small that even under the highest powers their presence can only be detected by the currents which they cause in the water; but as they are present in immense multitude, often over the whole surface of the body, they enable their possessor to execute movements more rapid (in proportion to their bulk) and complicated than animals of a much higher grade of organization. In those crescentric, boat-shaped little be-and-twentieth of an inch long; but others ings that you see so plentifully in this drop, which are called closterinæ, the locomotive organs are a number of short conical papillæ near the openings of the two ends of the shell; their movements are sluggish, and those short jerky, or swinging motions are probably due to currents in the water. But the oddest method of moving is that observed in the amaba family they have no ciliæ, no setæ, no feet, no proboscis; yet they get along pretty actively. The jelly of which they seem composed is highly contractile, and it possesses the power of thrusting out, apparently at will, extremities, or processes, or feet, or hands, by means of which they move about and execute their prehensile requirements. See, here is one just creeping into the field; watch it well, and observe its protean changes of form, (its name is proteus,) whilst I read to you Mr. Gosse's sketch of it: "You see a flat area of clear jelly, of very irregular form,ing at maturity, terminated the existence with sinuosities and jutting points, like the outline of some island in a map. A great number of minute blackish granules and vesicles occupy the central parts, but the edges are clear and colorless. A large bladder is seen near one side, which appears filled with a subtle fluid. But while you gaze upon it, you perceive that its form is changing; that it is not at two successive moments of the same shape exactly. This individual, which, when you first looked at it, was not unlike England in outline, is now, though only a few minutes have passed, something totally different; the projecting angle that represented Cornwall is become rounded and more perpendicular; the broken corner, that we might have called Kent, has formed two little points, up in the position of Lincolnshire; the large bladder, which was

of the parent by escaping through its lacerated integument; but that they formed in reality the residences of numerous individuals living together in a wonderful community." You perceive those green specks which stud the surface of the volvox, and which seem like the bulbous root of the locomotive cilia. Now, if you apply a power of one thousand diameters to one of these specks, you perceive in it a bright red point; and also see that the apparent cilia is not really such, but a whip-like proboscis similar to that before described as characterizing some of the monadina. The abovequoted authority considers that in each one of these specks we have a monad of high organization, possessing mouth, eye,

* Evenings at the Microscope, pp. 455–6.

From Titan.

PARISIAN LOCALITIES- EVENTY-TWO WEEKS OF TERROR.

THE STORY OF THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.

1859.]

PARISIAN LOCALITIES.

was, than others have acquired from much study of many such historians as would have considered the dramatic form to be unworthy of the historian's dignity.

But further still as regards our present subject, one contemporary might have been in Paris during those revolutionary days; might have read the newspapers regularly, and heard all the talk of the town; frequented the clubs, and attended the meetings of the Convention; and yet might have failed to be so strongly impressed and so truly informed as to the actuality of what was going on, as another who had done no more than watch from some window commanding a sight of this place, the tragedies of which it was the daily scene; the regular arrivals there day by day of successive victims; the brief preparations for their death, and the hurried look each would cast around; the rude strapping of them to the plank that was their common death-bed; the brutal mob shouting madly below; the ever recurring play of the slanting axe, as it gradually rose in repeated jerks, hung for a moment at the top of the inexorable machine, and then came swiftly gliding down; the fall of the head struck off with a dull sounding blow into the basket; the unbinding of the headless trunk while the arteries were yet spouting; the tossing of head and trunk together into the shell of rough boards or of rude wicker-work; the dashing of a bucket or two of water on the platform; the scattering of some fresh saw-dust or sand; the great knife, dripping as it mounted once more in the grooves of the tall posts; and so on again with scores of men and women, some very young and some very old, for hour after hour, from early every morning till long And if such a spectator past every noon. might have become callous at the time, and been made indifferent by the very frequency of the spectacle, we may be sure that later, and when better days succeeded, he would look back upon that period with a horror only increased by the recollection of his own blunted susceptibility. If, then, we would form an estimate of the suffering which was endured during the cruel eighteen months that elapsed between the death of Louis XVI. and that of Robespierre, and that, too, by all classes indiscriminately-if we would have the terror of those seventy weeks brought fully home to us if we would judge of the grief for what was already done,

47

and the dread for what might at any mo-
ment come, which brooded over every
- if
household, and must have been more or
less reflected in every countenance
we would appreciate the degree of morbid
indifference when their doom was sealed,
or of morbid fear arising equally from over-
tension of the mind; by the one of which
extremes some were led to the slaughter
with the apathy of bullocks; while, by
the other, not a few, with whom uncer-
tainty had become intolerable, were led
into uttering publicly the cry of Vive le
Roi! or some other royalist watchword,
that so their misery might at once be cut
short by the executioner-if, in one word,
we would bring ourselves into something
like sympathetic accordance with the heart
of the French nation as it throbbed during
"The Terror" we should best be able to
do so by acquainting ourselves with some
of those domestic tragedies, the catastro-
phe of which, equally with that of the
grand historical drama, was brought about
by the guillotine; and which, had they
occurred as isolated cases, would have
moved all our sympathy, though, because
they occurred in crowds, and were left in
the shade by more illustrious sorrows,
general history has been unable to give
them sufficient distinctness and individu-
ality.

Upon such particular cases, however, even if we had the materials, we could not attempt to enter in such a notice of the Place de la Concorde as the present; and we therefore confine ourselves to bringing under one view the more remarkable of these political executions; the chief lesson to be read from such a narrative being, that, as was said at the time, a revolution, like Saturn, devours its own children; and that those who in such cases sow, are sure also to reap, the whirlwind.

The first victim we shall notice is King Louis XVI. His wife, children, and sister still ignorant that the night before they had already seen him for the last time, were still expecting, and now very anxiously, to see him yet once again, and receive his last embrace and blessing, when two hours had already been occupied in his slow passage from the Temple where he had left them imprisoned. These hours pass, and he has arrived at the place the abominable originally named after his immediate predecessor on the throne man, the chastisement of whose iniquities was thus to be borne by his morally inno