1 88 ROMANCE OF LOW LIFE AMONGST PLANTS. 



The bergJi-viehl, mountain meal, in Norway and 

 Lapland has been found thirty feet in thickness ; in 

 Saxony twenty-eight feet thick ; and it has also been 

 discovered in Tuscany, Bohemia, Africa, Asia, the 

 South Sea Islands, and South America ; of this, 

 almost the entire mass is composed of flinty skeletons 

 of Diatomaceae. That in Tuscany and Bohemia 

 resembles pure magnesia, and consists entirely of a 

 shell, called Cavipilodisais, about the two-hundredth 

 part of an inch in size.^ 



Darwin says that the coast beds of shells which 

 run along hundreds of miles in Patagonia "are covered 

 by others of a peculiar soft white stone, including 

 much gypsum, and resembling chalk, but really of a 

 pumiceous nature. It is highly remarkable, from 

 being composed, to at least one-tenth part of its 

 bulk, of Infusoria. Professor Ehrenberg has already 

 ascertained in it thirty oceanic forms. This bed 

 extends for five hundred miles along the coast, and 

 probably for a considerably greater distance. At 

 Port St. Julian its thickness is more than eight 

 hundred feet." ^ 



"At Richmond, in Virginia, United States, there is 

 a flinty marl many miles in extent, and from twelve 

 to twenty-five feet in thickness, almost wholly com- 

 posed of the shells of marine animalcules (Diato- 

 maceae) ; for, in the slightest particles of it they are 

 discoverable. On these myriads of skeletons are built 

 the towns of Richmond and Petersburg. The species 

 in these earths are chiefly Naviculcs ; but the most 



 Jabez Hogg, "The Microscope," p. 432. 



* T>z.xvi\x\, Journal of Researches , p. 171. (1852,) 



