206 president's address. 



it is far different. Not only do species and genera exist over 

 very large areas, but we find forms identical with them in a 

 fossil condition down to the remotest geological epoch. Having 

 enlarged upon this portion of his subject, Mr. Brady came to 

 the revelations of Brooks's sounding lead. Portions of the ocean 

 bed, at depths of upwards of three miles, have been brought up, 

 and submitted to examination. From the reports made by the 

 late Professor Bailey, of New York, upon the microscopic 

 characters of these soundings, we gather that the unctuous, 

 clayey-looking deposit, thus drawn from the deep recesses of the 

 Atlantic, instead of consisting entirely of inorganic matter, as 

 was at first supposed, contained scarcely a trace of apything but 

 living organisms — that it consisted almost wholly of the shells 

 of Foraminifera, either perfect or broken. Mr. Brady exhibited 

 mountings of similar character to those of the Atlantic soundings 

 obtained from a depth of about a mile and a half, between Malta 

 and Crete, in the Mediterranean — the same species seeming to 

 predominate at all these great depths. Another curious fact, 

 bearing somewhat on the subject, is, that whilst the bed of the 

 Atlantic is apparently composed entirely of the calcareous shells 

 of Foraminifera^ that of the Pacific is almost devoid of calcareous 

 deposit, but is made up of the silicious frustules of Diatomacece. 

 But all observers agree that the deeper the soundings the smaller 

 the proportion of inorganic matter; so that, probably, at the 

 greatest depths, nothing whatever is present upon the floor of 

 the ocean but Foraminifera and Diatomacece, with scattered 

 spicules of sponges and other protozoa. In a geological point of 

 view, this fact is very suggestive, as accounting for the multi- 

 tudes in which fossil remains are found in the chalk and some 

 other strata. Probably no class of animals has played so import- 

 ant a part in the formation of the crust of the earth as the 

 Foraminifera. We may descend into the primary formations, 

 and we find, even in the Silurian strata, their remains, in the 

 form of casts, in a certain sandy clay in some parts of Russia. In 

 the Permian, and in the Magnesian Limestone of our own neigh- 

 bourhood, there have been discovered species of no less than four 

 genera. The various strata of the Secondary age abound in their 



