DEEP-SEA ORGANISMS. 145 



cup of the rod a little column of what he judged to 

 be a smooth unctuous clay. This, according to his 

 instructions, he carefully labelled and preserved, and 

 on his return to port transmitted the specimens to the 

 proper board. They were immediately sent for exa- 

 mination to eminent microscopists in Europe and in 

 the United States, and proved to be of great interest. 

 The whole of the little packets of supposed clay were 

 found to be actually composed of minute shells of 

 microscopic animals, not a particle of sand or gravel 

 or mud being discoverable among them. The great 

 majority of these shells were of a calcareous nature, 

 and belonged to that group of lowly animals known 

 as Foraminifera. There were, however, among them 

 a few siliceous shells of those disputed organisms 

 which are so keenly occupying the attention of micro- 

 scopic savans, the Diatomacece. These exquisitely 

 formed shells consist of films of lime and flint, so 

 delicate that a very little abrasion, a very slight 

 degree of violence, is sufficient to break them up into 

 minute fragments ; yet the specimens were almost 

 uniformly perfect. The inference is then irresistible, 

 that on that quiet floor the countless generations of 

 little shells lie as they fall, gently dropping, like the 

 soft flakes of snow on a calm winter's day, through 

 an atmosphere of water whose density no motion agi- 

 tates, where there is not current enough to rub their 

 tender forms one against the other, nor to sweep 

 among their millions a grain of the finest sand, or the 

 least atom of gravel from the steep sides of the Grand 



