327 
If the scientific do not know what is the fact, let them give 
any reason for thinking this rate improbable. If they say five 
only each in a year, we shall recast our figures ; and even then 
we shall find, that we want neither a million, nor 30,000 years, 
not even more than a single century or two, to account for all 
the chalk and all the ocean ooze there is now in the world. If 
they will allow the foraminifera to breed at all, and at the rate 
of any of the other lower organisms of which they have the 
most perfect knowledge, and if they will grant us but one to 
begin with, we shall be able to refute these mere fanciful 
t{ scientific doctrines ” that are totally unsupported by proofs 
or cogent arguments. 
But those who cannot believe that even a single individual 
of the foraminifera could have come into being of itself, and 
who consequently believe in Creation, do not of course suppose 
that when the waters were commanded to i( bring forth the 
living creatures after their kind,” that only one or only a single 
pair of the foraminifera were then created. Consequently any 
calculation as to their subsequent reproduction that is based 
upon there having originally been only one, is a mere concession 
to the adversary, and no part of our own case. Most likely 
millions of such creatures would start into life at the first fiat 
of the Great Creator. And though probably the rate of their 
propagation is very much greater than was supposed for the 
sake of argument, they could not continue thus to go on in- 
creasing, from the want of food, or for want of carbonate 
of lime or the other material required for the formation of 
their shells. The watery “ soil,” if I may use the phrase, 
would after a time become exhausted here and there, while 
millions of them would be sucked up by jelly-fish or otherwise 
disappear, in the notorious “ struggle for existence,” which we 
may admit to be powerful to slay and destroy, though not to 
give life in this world. But, if we compliantly suspend 
Theology , and, as is now the fashion, leave out Creation alto- 
gether — although our reason cannot find any other probable 
beginning of things; — and if we merely commence with the 
“ one only ” of these atom-like foraminifera, got anyhow, we 
have seen how rapidly the chalk formations may have grown, 
and in that way become “ deposited,” at the bottom of the 
ancient seas. There the chalk no doubt once lay, and there — 
have we any reason to doubt ? — the minute foraminifera, that 
built it up, once lived and increased and multiplied. Are we 
not now entitled to ask for some equally definite data and 
equally cogent argument from the other side, before we are 
expected to come to some contrary conclusion, and to believe 
in these indefinite thousands and millions of years ? 
