4 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



rocks in the latter being respectively the nearest land — it is impos- 

 sible they could have been a chance drift, borne along by a current 

 from either country. " Therefore," says Dr. Wallich, " all former 

 opinion as to the limit of life in the deep sea must give place to such 

 a startling fact. And where one form so highly organised has been 

 met with, it is only reasonable to assume that other correlated forms 

 may also exist ; and we may look forward to the discovery, at no 

 very distant period, of a new submarine fauna, frequenting the 

 deeper fastnesses of the ocean, which, while furnishing a new field of 

 research for those who are content to seek after living novelties, 

 shall also throw a gleam of ligb 4 ; on the geology and palaeontology 

 of the globe." 



Respecting the Globigerina, those minute Foraminifera whose 

 shells constitute so large a proportion of the " oozy" deposits brought 

 up by mid-Atlantic soundings, one interesting subject of debate has 

 been set at rest by Dr. Wallich' s discoveries. They do exist in a 

 living state at great depths, though the signs of life apparent in 

 them when examined after an hour's upward travel from the sea- 

 bottom to the surface, were feebler than in those taken from beneath 

 shallow water. Indeed, irrespective of the experiments by which 

 the author arrived at this conclusion, the circumstances of their 

 having been detected in the digestive cavity of one of the starfishes 

 mokes it highly probable that they form their chief source of food. 



In several samples of Globigerina ooze, the minute cell-like bodies 

 provisionally called " Coccoliths" by Prof. Huxley were detected, 

 looking at first sight very like the cells of the algal plant Protococcus 

 (now shown to be an abnormal development of lichen-gonidia) ; 

 those Dr. Wallich considers may probably be the larvae of the Globi- 

 germce. They appeared in two states, as globules adherent to the 

 surface of cellular mycelia, and as free moving bodies, showing in 

 some instances the commencement of cell-division. Their discovery 

 in a living state in this oose is of high geological importance ; for 

 microscopical investigation, undertaken by Mr. Sorby, proves their 

 existence in chalk-rocks, associated there, as they are in this North 

 Atlantic ocean, with Globigerince. Indeed, chalk itself is seen to be 

 little else than a compacted mass of Foraminifera shells, whole and 

 fragmentary, and may be best described by using the very words by 



