MINUTE SHELLS. 



201 



form the crust of the earth, there are more minute 

 species of chambered shells which have also produced 

 great and very remarkable effects. There is, for in- 

 stance, one small shell, no larger than a grain of millet, 

 which in several parts of Europe is employed by the 

 poorer classes as a substitute for rice or sago, yet this 

 has been so abundant that it is largely interspersed 

 in the strata of many quarries in the neighbourhood 

 of Paris. " We scarcely condescend," says Lamarck, 

 " to examine microscopic shells, from their insignificant 

 size ; but we cease to think them insignificant when we 

 reflect that it is by means of the smallest objects that 

 Nature everywhere produces her most remarkable and 

 astonishing phenomena. Whatever she may seem to 

 lose in -point of volume in the production of living 

 bodies, is amply made up by the number of the indi- 

 viduals, which she multiplies with admirable prompti- 

 tude to infinity. The remains of such minute animals 

 have added much more to the mass of materials which 

 compose the exterior crust of the globe, than the bones 

 of elephants, hippopotami, and whales." 



The fact is, that the greater portion of the island on 

 which we live, and of the globe, with its nine hundred 

 millions of inhabitants, teems with fossils, the remains 

 of those beings which existed many ages since in this 



