When the illustrious godfather of the atoms, Ehrenberg, baptised them and introduced them to the scientific world, he was accused of being too favorable to them, and of exaggerating the character of those little creatures. He declared them to be a complicated and elevated organization. So liberally did he endow them, that he gave them a hundred and twenty stomachs. The visible world became jealous of these invisibles, and, by a violent reaction, Dujardin reduced them to the lowest degree of simplicity. The asserted organs he treated as mere appearances; but, as he could not deny their obvious and great powers of absorption, he granted them the gift of being able to improvise stomachs proportioned to what they had to swallow. M. Pouchet does not coincide with this opinion, but rather inclines to that of Ehrenberg.
What is incontestable and admirable in these atoms is the vigor of movement.
Many have all the appearance of a precocious individuality. They do not long remain subject to the communistic life led by their immediate superiors, the true Polypes. Very many of these invisibles are individuals at the first leap; that is to say, that, at the first moment of their existence, they can come and go alone and at their own will; true citizens of the world whose movements depend only upon themselves.
Whatever can be seen or imagined of various modes of locomotion in the visible world, is equalled, even surpassed, among these invisibles. The impetuous whirl of a potent star, of a sun which attracts around him, as his planets, the weaker one which he meets, the more irregular course of the eccentric comet, the graceful undulation of the slender one in the water or upon the land, the rocking barque that veers right round in an instant, the rush of the swift shark and the slow crawl of the wretched sloth—all and every movement, clumsy or graceful, slow or swift, is to be found in the various species of atoms. And with what a marvellous simplicity of machinery! Here you see one, a mere thread, advancing, twisting, a veritable elastic cork-screw; there you see one that for oar and rudder has only an undulating tail or a pair of little vibrating eye-lashes. The beautiful little polypus-worms, like flowers in a vase, anchor together upon an isle—a little plant, or a miniature crab, and then separate and cast off by detaching their delicate peduncle.
What is even more surprising than the organs of motion, is what we may term the expression, the attitudes, the original signs of character and temper. You may recognize here the apathetic, there the vivacious and fantastic, some all alert for war, and others, as it would seem, fretful and agitated without any apparent cause. Again, you will occasionally see a whole crowd of remarkably quiet and peaceable atoms suddenly dispersed and knocked over by some scapegrace atom, conscious of superior strength, and spoiling for a fight.
A prodigious comedy is that of our atoms! They seem to be satirically rehearsing the various farces which are played in our own noble and serious world, of atoms of larger growth!
At the head of the infusoriæ, we must make respectful mention of the majestic giants, the highest type of motion and of strength, slow, but terrible and great.
Take some moss from a roof, steep it for a few hours in water, then place it under the microscopic inspection, and you behold a vast, a mighty animal, the elephant or the whale of the invisibles, moving with a youthful grace which those large animals do not always display. Respect this king of all the atoms, this rotifer, so called because on either side of his head he has a wheel; these wheels are his organs of locomotion, like the paddle-wheels of a steamship, or perhaps they also serve him as his arms of chase to catch his small game, the inferior and peaceable atoms! All fly, all yield to the rotifer, save one; one atom only fears nothing, yields nothing, but trusts to his superior weapons. He is a monster, but he is provided with superior senses. He has two great gleaming, purplish eyes. He is slow, but he can see, and he is admirably armed. To his strong paws he adds strong, sharp talons, which serve him to hold on with, and, at need, to serve him in the fight.
Potent initial essays of Nature, that with such small expenditure of matter, can create in such majestic fashion! Sublime first note of the sublime overture. These,—of what consequence is mere size?—have a colossal power of absorption and of movement, far beyond that which will be given to the enormous animals that are classed so much higher in the animal scale.
The oyster fixed upon its rock, the crawling slug, are to the rotifers creatures as disproportioned as man to the Alps or Cordilleras—so disproportioned that one cannot compare them by glance, hardly by reflection and calculation. Yet among those animal mountains, where will you find the vivacity, the ardor of vitality, displayed by the rotifer? What a fall we have as we ascend! Our atoms are too vivacious, dazzlingly agile, and these gigantic beasts are smitten with paralysis. What if the rotifer could conceive, for instance, the superb, the colossal starred sponge, which one may see in the Museum at Paris? It is to the rotifer what this globe, with its twenty-seven thousand miles of circumference is to man. Well! If the rotifer could compare himself to the huge sponge, rely upon it that the rotifer would move his wheels in utmost excitement, and exclaim—"I am great."