OF CREATION. 



233 



Fig. 83 



they are now changed, and in this way we occasion- 

 ally find grotesque shapes resembling in form various 

 familiar objects. 



In the sand associated with the chalk, the very 

 spongeous bodies themselves, exhibiting on their sur- 

 face the peculiar marks and apertures characteristic of 

 them, are also met with in a perfect state. The 

 figure marked (83) represents a common form. 



Flints, when examined 

 with the aid of a good micro- 

 scope, not only exhibit a net- 

 work of fibres, but also show 

 entangled amongst the fibres 

 a vast multitude of exceed- 

 ingly minute bodies, the re- 

 mains of a group of animals 

 known to naturalists as "in- 

 fusorial animalcules," and of 

 late years investigated with 

 great care by M. Ehrenberg. 



The skeletons of these 

 little creatures exist not 

 only in the recesses of the 

 chalk flints, but they also abound in many parts of 

 the solid matter of the chalk itself, so that a large 

 part of this rock would seem to be made up of the 

 fragmentary skeletons of these most minute animals, 

 whose very existence would be unknown to us with- 

 out the assistance of powerful microscopes. 



To give such an idea as can be conveyed by num- 

 bers, it will be sufficient to say, that, with regard to 

 some species, as many as twenty-two thousand indivi- 

 duals might be placed in a row on a linear inch of 



POLYPOTHECIA. 



