es may occur in the space of two miles
square. It may give a better conception of the amount of medusae in
this extent, if we calculate the length of time that would be requisite,
with a certain number of persons, for counting this number. Allowing
that one person could count a million in seven days, which is barely
possible, it would have required that eighty thousand persons should
have started at the creation of the world to complete the enumeration at
the present time!

"What a stupendous idea this gives of the immensity of creation, and of
the bounty of Divine Providence in furnishing such a profusion of life
in a region so remote from the habitations of men!

"The larger portion of these medusae, consisting of transparent
substances of a lemon-yellow colour, and globular form, appeared to
possess very little power of motion. Some of them were seen advancing
by a slight waving motion, at the rate of a hundred and eightieth of an
inch in a second; and others, spinning round with considerable celerity,
gave great interest and liveliness to the examination. But the
progressive motion of the most active, however distinct and rapid it
might appear under a high magnifying power, was, in reality, extremely
slow; for it did not exceed an inch in three minutes. At this rate they
would require one hundred and fifty-one days to travel a nautical mile.

"The vastness of their numbers, and their exceeding minuteness, are
circumstances, discovered in the examination of these animalcules, of
uncommon interest. In a drop of water examined by a power of 28.224
(magnified superficies) there were fifty in number, on an average, in
each square of the micrometer glass, of an eight hundred and fortieth of
an inch; and as the drop occupied a circle on a plate of glass
containing 529 of these squares, there must have been, in this single
drop of water, taken out of the yellowish-green sea, in a place by no
means the most discoloured, about 26,450 animalcules. Hence, reckoning
sixty drops to a dram, there would be a number in a gallon of water
exceeding, by one half the amount of the population of the whole globe!
It gives a powerful conception of the minuteness and wonders of
creation, when we think of more than twenty-six thousand animals living,
obtaining subsistence, and moving perfectly at their ease, without
annoyance to one another, in a single drop of water... A whale requires
a sea, an ocean, to sport in. About one hund