THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



field the silicious shells of the radiolaria with 

 their greater resistance alone maintain them- 

 selves. Eighty million square miles are very 

 close to one-fourth of the total surface of our 

 planet. On one-fourth of the earth's surface, 

 then, there falls continuously a rain of this fine 

 lime snow of which every crystal is a life product 

 that does not dissolve, while upon another quar- 

 ter it falls only to be continuously dissolved. 

 Hour after hour, day after day, while years, 

 centuries and thousands of years go on never 

 wearying, never exhausted, this silent rain of 

 organized lime particles goes down into the sea. 

 This monstrous ocean five and a half miles deep 

 produces a cloud of these tiny crystal balls. 

 Every second there is enough of this sulphuric 

 acid lime or gypsum particles dissolved to form 

 a mass of one thousand and fifty cubic miles 

 when transformed through the labor of life into 

 carbonic acid gas lime. That means that this 

 drizzling snow fall could build up a lime moun- 

 tain four miles high, four miles at the base and 

 eight thousand, four hundred miles long, that 

 is, as long as the whole Cordilleran range of 

 America. 



This supply of material continues constantly, 

 no matter how much is taken from it, like a per- 

 manently rising fog that ever creates new snow 

 clouds. 



To be sure, seconds are not enough to give 

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