THE LOWER FORMS OF LIFE. 55 



" What of that ? We have you there. You do not mean to say 

 that your ' what-d'ye-call-'em ' built up those splendid monu- 

 ments?" Stay awhile, my friend, and it may do your scepticism 

 good to listen for a moment. My " what-d'ye-call-'em " did more 

 than build the Pyramids they made the stone ! If you doubt this, 

 take a trip there next summer, and you will find the stone composed 

 of vast numbers of rounded discs, which were described by the old 

 writers as fossilised lentils used by the workmen who built the 

 Pyramids, and thought to be so until Strabo pointed out that it 

 could not be true, for there was a hill at Amasia, in Asia Minor 

 where he lived stretching out into a plain entirely composed of 

 similar lentil-like bodies (Geog., lib. xvii., p. 808, Paris, 1620). 

 And this has been proved correct by modern geologists, as we are 

 told by Dr. Carpenter that M. Tchihatcheff had brought from 

 Amasia splendid specimens of the well-known Foraminifer Num- 

 mulites so called from its " money-like " appearance ; for if you were 

 to cover a shilling on both sides with a layer of smooth calcareous 

 matter, you would make an exact representation of the fossil Num- 

 mulite. 



I began this history of the Foraminifera in Time by a statement 

 which looks more like a fairy tale than a strict scientific fact. I 

 went back into the " dawn of life," and showed how the Amoeba had 

 built up rocks of marble hundreds of miles in extent on our earth's 

 surface, and of a thickness known to be five, assumed to be fifteen 

 miles. I shall close it by an account still more remarkable, viz., a 

 brief sketch of the history of the Nummulite. 



If you will look at the geological table, you will observe 

 that the second group of strata (the Tertiary) is divided into 

 Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene expressive of their position in 

 time. 



Now, at the beginning of the Eocene period, and contempo- 

 raneously with the London clay and Paris basin formation, we first 

 observe the appearance of the Nummulite. It reached its highest 

 point of development about the middle of the Eocene period, when 

 at least fifty species are known to have existed. It then began 

 suddenly to decline, appeared in less and less numbers in the later 

 Tertiaries, and in our seas only a single species is known to exist. 



But in the period above indicated this little Foraminifer had 

 formed beds of enormous thickness and great extent in the crust of 

 the earth. Some idea of these extraordinary strata known as the 

 Nummulitic limestone may be gathered from the following extract 

 taken from Professor Haughton's " Manual of Geology," pp. 176 

 and 177 : 



" The geological distribution of Nummulites is most remarkable, 



