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At rare intervals, perhaps, a polar bear, drifted on an iceberg, may have its bones scattered over the bed; or a dead, decaying whale may similarly leave traces. But such remains must be so rare, that this new chalk-formation, if accessible, might be examined for a century before any of them were disclosed.
This chalk consists of the minute shells of Foraminifera, sprinkled with remains of small Entomostraca, and probably a few Pteropod-shells; though the sounding lines have not yet brought up any of these last. Thus, in so far as all high forms of life are concerned, this new chalk-formation must be a blank.
For if we find the first real bones of birds only in the Jura and in the Chalk-formation, they are birds with tail-spines and with teeth in the beak hence still related to the reptilia or the sauria. Only after them do the higher orders of mammalia appear; and last of all organisms, man.
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