DEPOSITS OF THE ATLANTIC IN DEEP WATER, ETC. 
29 
yet satisfactorily made out, but the bottom temperature that 
appears most favourable to the rapid multiplication of these 
organisms would seem to be about 45°, and the depth of water 
at least 2,000 fathoms. 
It is worthy of notice in reference to this, as in other matters 
connected with deep sea dredging, that the first suggestions 
and the germ of much of the theory that has been lately 
advocated by the distinguished naturalists who were selected 
by the Council of the Royal Society to conduct the enquiry for 
which sounding and dredging ships have been granted by 
Government, was due to Dr. Wallich, who accompanied Captain 
McClintock in the Bulldog, and the results of whose observa- 
tions were published in various ways between 1860 and 1862. 
In the year 1860, after his return from the Bulldog expedition, 
Dr. Wallich pointed out the absolute confirmation of previous 
observations as to the presence of animal life at great depths, 
which were till then doubtful owing to the absence of certainty 
as to actual depth, and a belief that the remains found might 
have sunk from the surface. That the minute foraminifera, and 
even other larger and more complex forms of life, dwelt in 
deep bottoms was proved by the bringing up of a living star- 
fish from 2,000 fathoms, and perhaps yet more conclusively by 
examining the contents of the stomachs of the animals coming 
from the bottom and only recently dead. Dr. Wallich, in his 
account of the natural history results of the Bulldog expedition, 
called attention to all these facts, suggesting their importance 
as pointing to the possible origin of chalk, distinctly advocating 
the view that there may exist in these deeper parts of the sea an 
intermediate form of protoplasmic life neither animal nor plant, 
but common to both, and urging strongly the necessity of further 
exploration. Dr. Wallich afterwards endeavoured through the 
Council of the Geographical Society, to induce the Government 
to place a ship at the disposal of qualified naturalists for the 
prosecution of these researches, and employed the same argu- 
ments as those which were afterwards, and more successfully, 
used by the Council of the Royal Society with the same object. 
It is a matter of regret that the valuable services of Dr. Wallich 
in this matter have been grudgingly admitted in the published 
reports of the Royal Society Committee, and that Dr. Wallich 
himself has not received from the Society that recognition 
which his anticipation of their movement in the matter certainly 
deserved. 
There are two or three things to be explained in reference to 
the origin of chalk, and among them the occasional bands of 
flint are perhaps among the most important. As white chalk 
is nearly pure carbonate of lime, so flint is generally almost pure 
silica. The flint is present in occasional lumps of strange 
