334 PROF. EHRENBERG ON ANIMALS OF THE CHALK 
It was the first animal decidedly peculiar to the chalk formation 
observed alive, and a species of a genus hitherto regarded as 
purely antediluvial. The shortness of the time did not allow me 
to prolong this successful investigation in Kiel, although I 
thought that I had already recognised Peridinium pyrophorum 
of the flint of Delitzsch, also living and luminous, of which I 
subsequently became more fully convinced from the prepara- 
tions which I brought away with me. I was now desirous of 
casting at least one look upon the more open North Sea. We 
hastened from Kiel by Hamburg to Cuxhaven, where, at Neu- 
werk, I wished again to examine some drops of the great ocean, 
and expected still more abundant booty of the same kind. I had - 
only time to remain there one day, which unfortunately was 
rainy; but having gone to the neighbourhood of Neuwerk, I 
took samples of the water, and of the deposits of the sea at spots 
of the great surface left by the ebb which seemed most suitable. 
During low water I also took, in the neighbourhood of Cux- 
haven, from various places, water for examination, and late at 
night also I had a bucket of sea-water taken for me, although 
the inhabitants and sailors present quite denied the luminosity 
of the sea under such circumstances, namely, during high tide 
and in rain. I soon examined with the microscope what I 
had procured, having filtered the water of the bucket to the 
amount of a bottle-full, and was immediately more fully con- 
vinced that the species of organisms of. the chalk formation 
still abound in our oceans. As the circumstances under which 
I made the observations impressed themselves strongly on my 
mind, I have briefly described them. I was never so much 
struck at the mass of life in the ocean, as when viewing that 
bucket of water in Cuxhaven, full of large sparks of light 
produced by the Mammaria scintillans, and which also con- 
tained the richest treasure of millions of Infusoria, several of 
which were the same species as had occurred at Kiel. What 
again most excited my attention were several species of two of 
those genera of siliceous-shelled Infusoria which occur not 
only single and rare in the chalk marls of Caltanisetta in Sicily, 
Oran, Zante, and in Greece, but are exactly those forms which 
by the inconceivable number of their minute shells constitute 
the great mass of these infusorial marls, and at the same time — 
also belong to genera which until now had never been ob- 
served living. I have succeeded in bringing the greater number 
of these species alive to Berlin, and have indeed this day, Oc- 
