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We're stuck here, and " I did not wait to hear what he wished to say further, but neutralized and collapsed him with the other aboriginals. The portatron apologized for having caused me inconvenience; but of course it was not its fault, so I did not neutralize it. Using it for d-f, I quickly located the culprit, Foraminifera 9-Hart Bailey's Beam, nearby.
Well, I put all you told me in my little MS.; but, for my life, I could not think of the name of the class to which they belong. Do you recollect it?" "Let me think a moment. Was it not Foraminifera?" "That's the identical word 'Foraminifera! No wonder I could not think of it! Six syllables tied up in a scientific knot. Phew! it makes my head ache worse to try to recollect it.
Carpenter, and a comparison of the results thus obtained with what is known of the surface fauna, have brought to light the remarkable fact, that while the surface and the shallows abound with Foraminifera and other calcareous shelled organisms, the indications of life become scanty at depths beyond 500 or 600 fathoms, while almost all traces of it disappear at greater depths, and at 1,000 to 2,000 fathoms the bottom is covered with a fine clay.
The absence of many fossil forms usually met with in marine strata, affords a useful negative indication of the fresh-water origin of a formation. For example, there are no sea-urchins, no corals, no chambered shells, such as the nautilus, nor microscopic Foraminifera in lacustrine or fluviatile deposits.
I took a little of it, and examined it under the microscope, when it turned out to be deep-sea sand from the Eastern Mediterranean. It was full of the minute shells called 'Foraminifera, and as one of these happened to belong to a species which is found only in the Levant, I was able to fix the locality." "But this is very remarkable," said the coroner.
The Globigerina of the present day, for example, is not different specifically from that of the chalk; and the same maybe 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.
Ehrenberg appears to have taken it for granted that the Globigerinoe and other Foraminifera which are found in the deep-sea mud, live at the great depths in which their remains are found; and he supports this opinion by producing evidence that the soft parts of these organisms are preserved, and may be demonstrated by removing the calcareous matter with dilute acids.
As I have pointed out elsewhere, it at once became obvious that the calcareous sticky mud of the Atlantic was made up, in the main, of shells of Globigerina and other Foraminifera, identical with those of which the true chalk is composed, and the identity extended even to the presence of those singular bodies, the Coccoliths and Coccospheres, the true nature of which is not yet made out.
There are also great masses of limestone growing in some seas, chiefly composed of corals and shells, or, as in the depths of the Atlantic, of chalky mud made up of foraminifera and diatomaceae. As to the dry land, so far from being the receptacle of fresh accessions of matter, it is exposed almost everywhere to waste away.
In such types as the Foraminifera, which, almost structureless internally though they are, secrete calcareous shells, it is clear that the nature of this outer layer is determined by inherited constitution.
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