[Illustration: PART OF DIATOM CASE (PLEUROSIGMA ANGULATUM) Magnified 4,900 diams. _From a photo-micrograph by Dr. R. Zeiss_ _Reproduced by permission of Messrs. C. Zeiss and Co. and Messrs. J. and A. Churchill, publishers of Carpenter’s “The Microscope”_ _Face page 156_ ] Minute! Yes. A mass of millions upon millions, held together, may be perceived and felt. But let a light scattering of them be dropped upon a slip of glass in broad daylight, and let a man of keen eyesight set himself to examine them. He will see--nothing! Not even an appearance of delicate dust. The diatoms are to him as if they did not exist. Then let him put that fine scattering under a good microscope, changing lens after lens, to higher powers. A world of beauty, of finish, of originality, of unbounded variety in construction, will open out before him. Each little shell is exquisitely shaped, exquisitely put together, exquisitely ornamented. Though thousands, nay, millions, of them might be packed into a cubic inch, yet there has been no carelessness, no scamping, in the work, no saying, “Nobody will see, so anything will do.” The different kinds of Diatoms are innumerable; and each kind, each species, even each variety, has its own especial form, its own complex design, followed out and faithfully reproduced in hundreds of millions of individuals. Pattern-markings, by which each variety is distinguished, formed of an infinitude of delicate lines and dots, arranged in every imaginable fashion, vary to an extent almost beyond conception. There are cases round, triangular, lengthy, many-sided, chain-like--but to picture them in words is hopeless. They have to be studied in their own wonderful minuteness and delicacy, complexity, and loveliness, before they can be known. In all this again we surely find unmistakable evidence of a MIND, hidden, out of sight, inventing and designing. Not the mind of the vegetable-speck, which for a brief space is sheltered in the ornate little flint-box, but of a Higher Intelligence--whether that of the Creator Himself directly, or whether, as may seem to some more probable, the mind of some intermediate Worker, Divinely appointed to the task. Why should not Angelic or other beings, in the Unseen World, be allowed to exercise their powers in such wise, even as man upon Earth is allowed to think, to plan, to discover, to devise, to invent, according to his mental gifts? Some such possibility may well suggest itself to a thoughtful imagination, as the variety of developments in these tiny sea-shells or cases becomes apparent. All the more, because the developments are not found scattered, haphazard, in single specimens, but--as above stated--are accurately followed out by the multitudes belonging to each variety.