62 SELECTIONS FROM HUXLEY 



substance is, in fact, the remains of the creature to which the 

 Globigerina shell, or rather skeleton, owes its existence 

 and which is an animal of the simplest imaginable description. 

 It is, in fact, a mere particle of living jelly, without denned 

 5 parts of any kind without a mouth, nerves, muscles, or 

 distinct organs, and only manifesting its vitality to ordinary 

 observation by thrusting out and retracting from all parts of 

 its surface long filamentous processes, which serve for arms 

 and legs. Yet this amorphous particle, devoid of every- 



10 thing, which, in the higher animals, we call organs, is capable 

 of feeding, growing, and multiplying ; of separating from the 

 ocean the small proportion of carbonate of lime which is 

 dissolved in sea-water; and of building up that substance 

 into a skeleton for itself, according to a pattern which can be 



1 5 imitated by no other known agency. 



The notion that animals can live and flourish in the sea, 

 at the vast depths from which apparently living Globigerince 

 have been brought up, does not agree very well with our 

 usual conceptions respecting the conditions of animal life ; 



20 and it is not so absolutely impossible as it might at first sight 



. appear to be, that the Globigerincz of the Atlantic sea-bottom 

 do not live and die where they are found. 



However, the important points for us are, that the living 

 Globigerina are exclusively marine animals, the skeletons 



25 of which abound at the bottom of deep seas ; and that there 

 is not a shadow of reason for believing that the habits of the 

 Globigerina of the chalk differed from those of the existing 

 species. But if this be true, there is no escaping the con- 

 clusion that the chalk itself is the dried mud of an ancient 



30 deep sea. 



The evidence furnished by the hewing, facing, and super- 

 position of the stones of the Pyramids, that these structures 

 were built by men, has no greater weight than the evidence 

 that the chalk was built by Globigerina; and the belief that 



