DEEP-SEA DEPOSITS 83 



grown very thin and frayed. Since they are as numerous 

 in the surface layer of water above red clay as they are 

 above calcareous ooze, it is believed that the lime- 

 dissolving power of cold bottom water is responsible 

 for this transformation of calcareous ooze into red clay. 



Fig. 29. Diatoms from the spring flowering 



If we should examine this reddish sediment carefully, 

 we would find here and there, especially near the 

 equator in the Pacific Ocean, that the foram shells had 

 been replaced by exquisitely shaped silica skeletons of 

 radiolarians — the miniature jewelry of the abyss, as 

 the great German biologist Haeckel called them. 



