34 



shall describe them under the names that are most familiar to 

 the British scientific collector. Doubtless sooner or later some 

 competent naturalist will undertake the elucidation of this 

 department of Paleontology, and construct a classification and 

 nomenclature based on natural characters ; till then the student 

 will find it hopeless to attempt to learn the ever-varying names 

 of genera and species applied to the Porifera and Polypifera by 

 different observers." 



The last form of siliceous structure to which I shall call 

 vour attention this evening is one very interesting and to which 

 Mantel makes no reference. Tubes seem to proceed from a 

 mass of spongy matter, ascend the foot stalk and then 

 divide into minute fibres which surround the periferae of the 

 fossil. Some of these are of single type whilst others are 

 branched specimens. And now I will reserve, for another 

 paper, the consideration of these siliceous fossils from the 

 chalk. That they come from the chalk I have not the slightest 

 hesitation in affirming. The shingle beach invariably points to 

 the nature of the rocks adjoining and from which they originate 

 by the gradual decay and breaking down of these barriers to the 

 inroads of the sea, and by the wear of atmospheric influences, 

 and as my collection has been gathered from the base of the 

 Dover Cliffs — principally Shakespeare — from Hastings and the 

 neighbourhood of Beachy Head, and from the High Port Cliff 

 between Ventnor and Bonchurch, I think my assertion is fairly 

 borne out. The chalk cliffs are essentially of organic structure ; 

 the same source from which they sprung is now at work revealed 

 to us by the deep sea dredgings of the •' Challenger," for from a 

 depth of 12,000 feet they brought up a chalky ooze filled with 

 foraminifera, sponges, and a variety of other organic substances. 

 The forms dying become enveloped in this deposit to be in time 

 impregnated with silex so when that far distant time shall 

 bring these fresh deposits to the surface, either by an 

 alteration of the oceans depth or by volcanic action the 

 future geologists of untold ages may, if records be pre- 

 served, compare the ocean fauna of to-day with the forms 

 then introduced from new fields of discovery, for. wherever 

 civilisation makes its home, there science, the handmaiden of 

 human thought and reflection, will also uphold the progress of 

 mental culture and investigation by keeping the records of the 

 past, and now, by the diffusion of knowledge through the press, 

 we have no fear that the human race will again be subject to 

 such an irreparable loss as the burning of another Alexandrian 

 librarj-, which is said to have contained 700,000 precious volumes 

 and thus destroyed much of the ancient records of Egypt, Greece 

 and Rome. 



