MAKINE BOTANY. 105 



CHAPTER XI. 



Do not think, dear reader, that with the enormous families 

 offish, moluces, jelly fish, crustaceans, and polypes, which 

 we have brought before your notice, that Life in the Sea is 

 exhausted, and that the salt water, or the sand on the 

 shore, contains no further marvels for you. To the un- 

 assisted eye all this may certainly appear desolate and unin- 

 habited ; but the microscope, or even the magnifying glass, 

 will soon teach you better, and, in the shortest space, reveal 

 to you a new and astounding world. While walking along 

 the beach pick up a handful of the drift-sand, which the 

 wind has collected, and examine it through a magnifying 

 glass : you will perceive nearly always, under the coarse 

 grains of the inorganic silicious earth, a quantity of the 

 most graceful forms of shell ; some shaped like antique 

 amphora?, others convoluted like nautili or ammonites — 

 all in their smallness so carefully carved, and formed in 

 such a masterly way, that no human artist would be able to 

 produce them in the same perfection on an increased size. 



The knowledge of these pretty creatures, of these Rhizo- 

 pods and Foraminifera, as they are called, may justly be 

 regarded as an achievement of the most recent times ; for 

 it is not much more than a century since they were first 

 discovered by the Italian naturalist, Beccaria, in the sea- 

 sand at Ravenna. For a long period they were regarded 

 as the exclusive product of the Adriatic : afterwards they 

 were found here and there in England and France ; their 

 universal propagation and importance in the Oceanic House- 

 hold was only proved in 1825, by Abide D'Orbigny. 



It has been conclusively shown that Foraminifera are 

 present in the sand of all sea-coasts, and in such extra- 

 ordinary quantities, that they form a material portion of 



