The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1883-06-04
Tnf,soria and Rhizopoda.

Darwin's revelations in regard to the
earth-worm, besides showing the prodi-
gious and useful work performed by
that seemingly insignificant creature,
were also added proof that some OF the
most unsupported agencies are occupied
in a labor of absolute necessity TO the
well-being or even preservation OF the
globe. Not that it is claimed for the
earth-worm that its work is preserva-
tive, though that may be too; but it is
certainly the fact that the stupendous
labor performed by a creature almost
universally thought of only in connec-
ton with the angler or the early bird is
typical of the silent forces continually
at work preserving or making habitable
our world.
Not the whales, the elephants, the
nippopotami, not the giants of creation,
that do the effective work of the uni
verse, but the atoms. But trif1ing
knowledge of geology is necessary to
understand the importance of the lime
stone strata, and these are in large part
the product of the tiny rhizopods, those
almost microscopic shell-fish which in
former ages swarmed in countless null
titudes in the ocean depths, and, yield
inc up their own lives, combined in the
oceans bed to form hard, thick crust,
which should play large part in the
preservation of the world.
Another important factor was the in
fusoria, classed by Dana among animal
ed creatures, but now known to belong
to the vegetable world Most of these
microscopic vegetables were soft, but
some had hard, scaly coverings which
massing together formed hard sub
stance which played fair part in the
building of the world, and afterward as
flint helped generations of man to make
that immense stride in civilization from
raw to cooked food The softer infuso-
ria did somewhat toward building, but
did more perhaps in writing the book of
nature, which scientific men have now
learned to read. They found the skel-
etons of animals and filled in about
them, keeping them, so that after the
grand upheaval and displacement which
senC the oceans to other beds, man
might come and find this illustrated
book and read it.
And this very same work the rhiZo-
pods and the infusoria are doing to-day.
Millions and thousands of millions are
destroyed hourly by the whales, who al
most subsist on them and still millions
and millions of times as many more are
dropping, through fathoms of ocean,
seeking the bed to again build Il wall
against disintegration.
1t is not little curious to note the
uses to which man has put his little ben
efactors In Egypt they built pyramids
with them; in Paris they bull d those
monotonous rows of houses with them:
everybody makes lime OF them; the saw
ages, when they did not turn them int
deadly weapons, made fire by them
sometimes we call them silicon, and pol
ish our silver with them; sometimes We
say nothing, and add weight to cotton
and paper goods with them; and in Cal
ifornia they put them to Il new use, anC
| wash their hands with them.
As soap they are not perhaps an un
qualified success, but they do well to
make the body of soap made from fat
Still, there is some reason in calling
them, as is done, rock soap. During q
recent upheaval, perhaps two hundred
| thousand years ago, a stratum of infu
serial earth was broken, and now show
itself on edge along various parts of the
| California coast.
Somebody, who had probably first sa
down upon it, both suddenly and uuwil
lingly, for it is very slippery when wet
discovered that it would make verl
fair lather in sea-water. Being an OLD
Californian, he knew how to put on
and one together, He tasted the sub
stance, and found it was somewhat al
kaline in flavor; he knew there wa
plenty of petroleum in the neighbor
hood, and it occurred to him at onci
that the oil and the alkali had been com
bined in natures laboratory. Here wa
natural soap'
1t was not so, never mind; in Califor
MIA it is enough to think a thing true t
substantially make it so; and therefor
it is that in California one may wash hi
hands with infusoria, john r. CoryeJi