770 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and then destroyed the whole edition a few days afterward, because 

 he could find only six purchasers of the work, to the preparation of 

 which he had devoted twenty years of his life ! These organisms were 

 as poorly appreciated then as now. Max Shultze reports that he has 

 separated 1,500,000 specimens from one ounce of sifted sand from the 

 coasts of Italy, near Mola di Gaeta. Also the deep-sea sands are in 

 great part made up of their shells. In most of these the perforated 

 forms abound, but in many localities the silicic symmetrical frames 

 are most numerous. Until recently the great depths of the ocean 

 were supposed to be dark, barren wastes ; that the lack of oxygen, with 

 the immense pressure of water from above, rendered these abysses im- 

 penetrable and uninhabitable. But the success of modern deep-sea 

 soundings, particularly in the region of the Atlantic cable, has shown 

 that the Atlantic ooze or chalk-mud, of which the ocean-bed is so 

 largely composed, is literally alive with protoplasmic animalcules, 

 whose innumerable shells and calcareous deposits give to this ooze its 

 peculiar character, and are virtually constructing beds of chalk. These 

 and other facts have led some of our best authorities to believe that 

 the formation of chalk has been a continuous process from the Creta- 

 ceous time to the present. 



In their geographical distribution most have an extremely wide 

 range, and great numbers of species are cosmopolitan in their occur- 

 rence, yet there is a general uniformity of the conditions under which 

 they exist. For example, globigerina appears often in such great 

 depths of the ocean that the temperature of its habitat hardly varies 

 with the seasons, or even for different zones, while the same species 

 under different conditions of depth, temperature, etc., does show very 

 strong varieties, which are sometimes so markedly distinct as to be 

 accounted different species and genera, as has often been asserted by 

 Carpenter, Williamson, and others. Professor Carpenter also states 

 that Messrs. Parker and Jones became so familiar with the geographi- 

 cal variations of the species of perforated shells, that they could judge 

 from the appearance of a specimen whence it came. 



The infusorians belong chiefly to the fresh water, being plentiful 

 in all lakes, ponds, swamps, rivers, and smaller streams, while only a 

 few are marine ; contrariwise, the rhizopods are mostly found in the 

 seas, a small number inhabiting fresh waters. The rhizopods also 

 serve an important function in the depths of the sea by setting free in 

 the water large supplies of carbonic and phosphoric acids. Certain 

 infusorian lash-swimmers (noctiluca, etc.) sometimes make the ocean 

 look red or bloody by day and illumine it with phosphorescence at 

 night. This is often observed in the Red Sea, in the Gulf of Guinea, 

 off the north of France, on the Peruvian coasts, and in the Gulf of 

 California, which on this account was called Mar Vermijo, or Vermil- 

 ion Sea, by the early Spanish navigators. 



With few exceptions, microscopic beings possess the power of 



