325 
Atlantic ) ; or, Is it a very different formation, that was 
accumulated by the fecundity and reproduction of living 
foraminifera that had never been washed away from their 
native beds in the bottom of the primeval seas where first 
they began to live ? Yon will observe the two cases, as now 
supposed, are no longer analogous. If this supposition be 
wrong, and a true analogy can be established, it must be 
obvious that this will very materially affect the cogency of 
the argument in support of Professor Huxley's doctrine. The 
importance of having some actual knowledge to guide us by 
analogy, some real “ science" of the formation of the Atlantic 
ooze, cannot be over-estimated. For there is still a further 
analogy, which Professor Huxley pointed out, between the 
chalk and nummulitic strata. Both have been evidently 
formed in the beds of the ancient oceans ; for both are full of 
the dead remains of sea-inhabiting living organisms. It will 
make all the difference to our argument and analogy, as regards 
all such marine formations, if they grew up at the bottom 
of the seas, like coral reefs now, by the reproduction of their 
living foraminifera and nummulites, &c., in situ ; and if these 
were not , after having grown and been reproduced and mul- 
tiplied elsewhere — for I apprehend I may assume that forami- 
nifera are not eternal atoms ! — washed away from then* beds, 
and carried hither and thither by some ancient gulf stream, 
to feed whales and jelly-fish, while only a remnant of them 
could escape to fall to the bottom as a sediment or deposit of 
ooze. 
In asking Professor Huxley for merely a statement of the 
scientific doctrines as to these essential points, I ventured to 
hint at another analogy as regards the now admitted growth 
of peat, which — as “ a word to the wise " — might have enabled 
him to understand the importance of my inquiry. At one 
time, and not very long ago, it was scarcely known as a scientific 
doctrine that peat really grew at all, and even now its rate of 
growth is kept well under check. One eminent man of science, 
(who for years was himself kept down by other men of science, 
though lately he has become almost “the rage,") — I mean 
M. Boucher de Perthes, — has taught that the growth of peat 
could only be computed at the rate of about the fifth of an 
inch in a century ; whereas Sir Charles Lyell in his Principles 
of Geology alludes to the growth of a peat-moss in Loch- 
broom in Ross-shire, to such an extent of thickness, 
in “ less than half a century," as to be fit to be dug 
for fuel by the inhabitants. He also mentions, in the same 
celebrated scientific work, that the Roman roads in Scotland 
are now in some instances covered over with peat-moss. 
