48 POPULAR ILLUSTRATIONS OF 



exactly the reverse of that above described. They must either, 

 where the coast sand is coarse and gravelly, be picked off the 

 corallines (whose zone, by the bye, is their especial home) or sea- 

 weeds. When the bottom is muddy and fine-grained, " the mud is 

 to be put into a vessel containing water, and well stirred up. The 

 fine inorganic particles are floated off, whilst the shells, from their 

 greater density and larger size, sink to the bottom ; a repetition of 

 the washings leaving them perfectly clean." 



Such is a slight sketch of the Foraminifera in space. But they 

 are still more interesting in their fossil condition ; and as it is here 

 that their true position in the physical history of the world can be 

 best studied, I will devote my next chapter to a consideration of 

 "Foraminifera in Time." 



CHAPTER V. 

 THE FORAMINIFERA IN TIME. 



OFR path now lies for a season in the crust of the earth. We must 

 look into that mighty record of the past for proofs that the sarcode 

 Amoeba was a creature ultimately designed by Omnipotent power 

 to build up the solid portion of the world which man was destined to 

 people. It has been the province of very recent investigators to 

 prove that the Amoeba is the oldest of known fossils ; that it was the 

 architect unconsciously working away at a period so remote, that we 

 can only realise it in any intelligible form by comparing it with the 

 space we are told to think of, supposing the nebulous matter which 

 is resolved into stars by the high power of Eosse's telescope reveals 

 to us suns which are the centres of systems like our own. For years 

 past we have been told by geologists that the venerable relic known 

 as Oldhamia antiqua, figured and described in Mackay's "First 

 Traces of Life," and found abundantly in the Lower Cambrian 

 rocks, was the oldest of fossil forms. But geology is a progressive 

 science, and each year adds something to our knowledge of that 

 record which tells us of primeval fungi or most venerable Protozoa. 

 Sir Eoderick Murchison and Professor Sedgwick, having spent the 

 best part of their valuable lives in establishing the true position and 

 developing the geological history of the Silurian and Cambrian 

 rocks, find now other investigators are going beyond them, and 

 placing still lower systems than theirs among the fossiliferous strata 

 of the earth's crust. 



