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 starthng 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 light on the geology and palaeontology 
of the globe." 
Respecting the Glohigenna, those minute Foraminifera whose 
shells constitute so large a propoi'tion 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 ari'ived at this conclusion, the circumstances of their 
having been detected in the digestive cavity of one of the starfishes 
makes it highly probable that they form their chief source of food. 
In sev eral samples of Glohigerina 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 sho^vn to be an abnormal development of lichen-gonidia) ; 
those Dr. Wallich considers may probably be the larvae of the Globi- 
gerince. They appeared in two states, as globules adherent to the 
surface of cellular myceha, 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 Glohigerinoe. 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 
