THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



once more in the dark abyss but it can not re- 

 main dark before such spectacles. The eye of 

 the mind still wanders like a great light trap 

 over all. 



Ever narrower, ever lower becomes the cata- 

 comb-like cave passage through which we are 

 now going. Soon the roof presses down until 

 we must creep upon all fours. Then I sudden- 

 ly cut my hand upon a sharp edge. From 

 where could a fragment of glass come.? We 

 strike a light and discover it is a wholly differ- 

 ent material, it is a piece of flint, whose ragged 

 edge has wounded me. It lies close to where 

 it has been broken off. In the limestone itself 

 there are dark strata of such flint interspersed. 

 They must have a still more primitive relation 

 to the old ocean sjime than had the chalk. Flint 

 is composed of silica. We think of those layers 

 of radiolaria on the bottom of the present ocean 

 and how these little radiolarian stars consist of 

 pure silica. Perhaps these ancient fragments of 

 silica in the chalk ocean are really hard baked 

 masses of such radiolarian material mixed with 

 countless pulverized silicious skeleton of certain 

 sponges. The crushing hand of time which 

 has pressed the chalk slime into white lime has 

 formed this silicious inheritance from the prim- 

 itive world life into flint which now penetrates 

 through the chalk in strata, like dried flowers 

 in the leaves of an old book. 

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