Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 May 1886 — Red Snow. [ARTICLE]

Red Snow.

Even to-day" the wild theories about the red snow are not yet ended. Seeing that the young spores of the algae move incessantly backward and forward-in the water, the idea arose that they were animalculse, and red snow only the low-esfc'-form of animal life. By degrees, however, it came to* be an accepted fact that this voluntary motion does not belong exilusivelv to animal life, and the young spores of the plants, although they move freely about in the- water,and are plentifully provided with fine, hair-like threads like the reaTinfusoria, still remain plants, and never turn into animals, and thus the plant nature of the “snow blossom” was finally settled. The red snow alga found on the Alps, Pyrenees, and Carpathians, and also on the summits of tie North American mountains as far down as California, is not, however, such a determined enemy to beat as its having its home in the ice region would imply. In the Arctic circle, as well as on our own mountains of perpettrid snow, especially on Monte Rosa, the red snow is seen in summer like a light rose-colored film, which gradually deepens in color, particularly in the track of human footsteps, till at length it turns almost black. In this state, however, it is not a rotten mass, but consists principally of carefully capsuled “quiescent spores,” in which state these microscopic atoms pass the winter, bearing in this form the greatest extremes of temperature. Some have been exposed to a dry heat of a hundred degrees, and were found to still retain life-bearing properties, while others, again, were exposed with impunity to the greatest cold' known in science. This proves that the prodnc"if

trre organs in a capsuled state can bear vast extremes of temperature without Injury; a significant fact, in which lies the secret of the indestructibility of those germs which are recognized as promoters of so many diseases. — Chamhern' Journal. ' 71