28 FORAMENIFERA. 



This, we may remark, is the delicate microscopic 

 shell, described above by Lieutenant Maury, which 

 belongs to the family of Foramenifera, the earliest 

 so far as it yet known of all created things. 



As regards the geographical extent of the white 

 chalk in Europe alone, the same authority states that 

 it extends "from the North of Ireland to the Crimea, 

 a distance of 1 1 40 geographical miles, and from the 

 vSouth of Sweden to the South of Bordeaux, a distance 

 of about 840 geographical miles," in length and 

 breadth respectively. And in Southern Russia, ac- 

 cording to Sir Roderick Murchison, the white chalk 

 " is sometimes found 600 feet thick." * 



Now when we remember the enormous thickness of 

 the cretaceous rocks, of which the white chalk forms 

 but one out of a whole series, all of which bear 

 evident traces of having been deposited atom by atom, 

 through the agency of water, in a similar way what 

 a boundless vista of the eternity of the past is thus 

 revealed to us! 



That these strata must have been deposited thus, is 

 evident; and this conclusion is generally accepted by 

 all geologists of the present day for they are full of 

 these minute shells, and other remains of the ancient 

 sea, many of them of so fragile a nature that one 

 rough touch would have sufficed to destroy them yet 

 immense numbers embedded in these rocks are found 

 in a beautiful state of preservation. 



Even the very ripples formed by the water as it 

 beat upon the primeval strand, are still in places 

 plainly and unmistakably visible. All this shows, 

 beyond the possibility of mistake, that these rocks 



* Elements of Geology, by Sir Chas. Lyell, Bart., 6th edit., p. 316. 



