The Hocking sentinel. [volume] (Logan, Ohio) 1871-1906, 1884-01-31
Infusoria snd Rhisooada.

Darwin's revelations in regard to tha
carth-worln, besides showing the prodi-
gions and useful work performed by
that seemingly insignificant creature,
were also added proof that some of the
most unsuspected agencies are occupied
in 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
hippopotami, not the giants of creation,
that do the effective work of the uni
verse, but the atoms. But trilling
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 shcll-tish which in
fcymer ages swarmed in countless null
ltudes in the ocean depths, and. yield
ing 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 animat-
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 afberward 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 aud filled in about
them, keeping them, so that after the
grand upheaval and displacement which
sent 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
through fathoms of ocean,
seeking the bed to again build wall
against disintcgration.
T. g ,,o% l;<f1a tn v~%o
uses to which man has put his little ben
efactors. In Egypt they built pyramids
with them; in Paris they build those
rows of houses with them;
everybody makes lime of them; the saw
ages, when they did not turn them into
deadly weapons, made fire by them;
sometimes we call them silicon, and pol
sh our silver with them; sometimes we
say nothing. and add weight to cotton
and paper goods with them; and in Cal
fOrnia they put them TO a new use, and
wash their hands with them.
AS soap they are not perhaps an un-
qualified success, but they do well to
make the body Of q soap made from fat.
Still, there is some reason in calling
hem, as is done, rock soap. During a
recent uphcavai. perhaps two hundred
thousand years ago. stratum of infu-
'orial earth was broken. and now shows
tself on edge along various parts of the
California coast.
Somebody. who had probably first sat
lown upon it, both suddenly and unwil-
ingly, for it is very slippery when wet,
discovered that it would make a very
air lather in sea-water. Being an old
californian, he knew how to put one
Ind one together. He tasted the sub
tance, and found it WAS somewhat al
zaline in flavor; he knew there was
,lenty of petroleum in the neighbor-
lood, and it occurred to him at once
hat the oil and the alkali had been COM
'ined in nature 5 laboratory. Here was
! natural soap!
1t was not 50. never mind; in Califor-
liz it i; enough tn think thing true to
make 1t SO: and therefore
Is that in Cillfoin:.: os.: may wash his
lands with iniusofis. .-jo5n r. CoryeU