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After I had learned a great many interesting things about the life and habits of the children of the sea how in the midst of dashing waves the little polyps build the beautiful coral isles of the Pacific, and the foraminifera have made the chalk-hills of many a land my teacher read me "The Chambered Nautilus," and showed me that the shell-building process of the mollusks is symbolical of the development of the mind.
The Globigerina of the present day, for example, is not different specifically from that of the chalk; and the same may be said of many other Foraminifera. The longest line of human ancestry must hide its diminished head before the pedigree of this insignificant shell-fish. We Englishmen are proud to have an ancestor who was present at the Battle of Hastings.
The males of many birds are among the most beautiful objects in nature; but that the beauty of nature is altogether irrelative to man's admiration or appreciation, is strikingly proved by the admirable sculpture on Diatoms and Foraminifera; beings whose very existence was unknown prior to the invention of the microscope.
In that region, about 200 species of testacea, marine and fresh-water, have been obtained, with many foraminifera and remains of fish.
Higher in the series is a remarkable calcareous rock, formerly called "the nummulite limestone," from the great number of discoid bodies resembling nummulites which it contains, fossils now referred by A. d'Orbigny to the genus Orbitoides, which has been demonstrated by Dr. Carpenter to belong to the foraminifera.
It appears that of more than fifty species of these foraminifera described by D'Archiac, one or two species only are found in other tertiary formations whether of older or newer date. Nummulites intermedia, a Middle Eocene form, ascends into the Lower Miocene, but it seems doubtful whether any species descends to the level of the London clay, still less to the Argile plastique or Woolwich beds.
For the remainder of the voyage she avoided Anthony Dasent's company as much as possible, and, lest he should add jealousy to the gloom in which he enveloped himself, sought unexciting joys in the society of a one-eyed geologist who discoursed playfully on the foraminifera of the Pacific slope. One day Dasent came on her alone, and burst out wrathfully: "Why are you treating me like this?"
Among many univalves agreeing with those of Africa on the eastern side of the Atlantic are Cypraea sanguinolenta, Buccinum lyratum, and Oliva flammulata. Amphistegina Hauerina, d'Orbigny. M. Alcide d'Orbigny has shown that the foraminifera of the Vienna basin differ alike from the Eocene and Pliocene species, and agree with those of the faluns, so far as the latter are known.
At intermediate depths they mantle the ocean floor with a white, soft lime deposit known as Globigerina ooze, from a genus of the Foraminifera which contributes largely to its formation. RED CLAY. Below depths of from fifteen to eighteen thousand feet the ocean bottom is sheeted with red or chocolate colored clay.
They include, first of all, the foraminifera, which usually have shells composed of carbonate of lime. These shells, settling to the bottom of the ocean, have accumulated in vast beds, and when compacted and raised above the surface, form chalk, limestone, or marble, according to the degree and mode of their hardening.
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