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But if the Radiolaria and Diatoms are thus rained upon the bottom of the sea, from the superficial layer of its waters in which they pass their lives, it is obviously possible that the Globigerinae may be similarly derived; and if they were so, it would be much more easy to understand how they obtain their supply of food than it is at present.
These silicious bodies belong partly to the lowly vegetable organisms which are called Diatomaceoe, and partly to the minute, and extremely simple, animals, termed Radiolaria. It is quite certain that these creatures do not live at the bottom of the ocean, but at its surface where they may be obtained in prodigious numbers by the use of a properly constructed net.
In this way we get a bewildering variety and increasing complexity of forms, ascending in four divergent lines from the naked ancestral type to the extreme grace and intricacy of the Calocyclas monumentum or the Lychnaspis miranda. These, however, are rare specimens in the 4000 species of Radiolaria.
In the course of the present year several foreign commentaries upon Mr. Darwin's great work have made their appearance. Professor Haeckel, to whom Schleicher addresses himself, previously took occasion, in his splendid monograph on the 'Radiolaria' , to express his high appreciation of, and general concordance with, Mr. Darwin's views.
But if the Radiolaria and Diatoms are thus rained upon the bottom of the sea, from the superficial layer of its waters in which they pass their lives, it is obviously possible that the Globigerinæ may be similarly derived; and if they were so, it would be much more easy to understand how they obtain their supply of food than it is at present.
The surface of the Disk ringed about by the aureate zodiac in which the nine ovals shone was a maze of geometric symbols traced in the lines of living gem fires; infinitely complex those patterns and infinitely beautiful; an infinite number of symmetric forms in which I seemed to trace all the ordered crystalline wonders of the snowflakes, the groupings of all crystalline patternings, the soul of ordered beauty that are the marvels of the Radiolaria, Nature's own miraculous book of the soul of mathematical beauty.
But if the Radiolaria and Diatoms are thus rained upon the bottom of the sea, from the superficial layer of its waters in which they pass their lives, it is obviously possible that the Globigerinæ may be similarly derived; and if they were so, it would be much more easy to understand how they obtain their supply of food than it is at present.
"The person who does this daily for five minutes as a habit will probably have no need of a physician," adds Haeckel, and with this sage remark he dismisses the subject, branching off into an earnest talk on radiolaria. Haeckel was educated for a physician and began his career by practising medicine.
Nevertheless, the positive and negative evidence all points the other way. The skeletons of the full-grown, deep-sea Globigerinoe are so remarkably solid and heavy in proportion to their surface as to seem little fitted for floating; and, as a matter of fact, they are not to be found along with the Diatoms and Radiolaria in the uppermost stratum of the open ocean.
These siliceous bodies belong partly to the lowly vegetable organisms which are called Diatomaceæ and partly to the minute and extremely simple animals termed Radiolaria. It is quite certain that these creatures do not live at the bottom of the ocean, but at its surface, where they may be obtained in prodigious numbers by the use of a properly constructed net.
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