C44 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[February 11, 1871 
the instrument itself. I would advise those who 
may be thinking of beginning microscopic inquiry to 
be satisfied with lower powers in the first instance. 
Learn to use them well with any ordinary objects 
you may pick up, as, for instance, the different parts 
of a fly or a plant simply laid upon a black or white 
ground, as the case may be, light coloured objects 
being best seen on a black ground, and dark objects 
on a light ground. Lay these objects in this way 
on a black or white ground and study the characters 
of the different parts, the management of the light 
and the mode of using the instrument, before you 
attempt to deal with higher powers. By this means 
you will save yourself a great deal of trouble and 
be going through a very valuable education. The 
lower powers are now made specially with educa¬ 
tional microscopes; in fact, it was a special point 
which I insisted on with the Society of Arts micro¬ 
scope, that there should be a lower power of this 
kind, and I recommend all those who are commencing 
the study to begin with learning the use of them. 
You will find it wonderful how many plain ordinary 
objects, that come under your cognizance every day, 
may be seen in quite a new aspect, even by the use 
of these low powers. 
We will now begin the exposition of the use of the 
microscope, by speaking of one of the most familiar 
of all objects,—a piece of chalk. I thought I could 
not do better than introduce this to you in its na¬ 
tural history aspect, because it is one you are all 
familiar with in its common every-day appearance. 
It will, perhaps, interest you rather more when I con¬ 
nect it with the work upon which I am myself en¬ 
gaged. For example, in this little box upon the table 
is a piece of what we may call modern chalk, which 
is now being formed on the bed of the Atlantic. This 
was brought up a year and a half ago from a depth 
of nearly three miles, 2435 fathoms. We brought up 
about 14 cwt. of tliis in our largest deep dredges; 
and I venture to say that any of you looking at this 
would see no difference at all between it and an 
ordinary piece of chalk, except that it is a little 
browner, but still many vaiieties of common chalk 
are quite as brown as this. The microscope lias 
shown that chalk is coinmonly composed of the re¬ 
mains of minute shells; sometimes the shells are 
found in great abundance, perfect as we find in this 
globigerina mud, as we call it. These shells are so 
small that they could scarcely be seen by the naked 
eye,—a single shell on a black ground would appear 
as the merest white point, and thousands of them 
would be required to weigh a grain; yet the aggre¬ 
gation of these, that is now going on at the bottom 
of the Atlantic, is forming an immense area of chalky 
deposit, the thickness of which we do not know. 
We know, however, the thickness of that which has 
been raised in the chalk cliffs of Dover, for example, 
and in the centre of Europe generally, which is 
several thousand feet in many instances; and you 
may, therefore, conceive what a vast lapse of time 
must have been required for the accumulation of 
such a deposit. We believe that the Globigerina, 
now living on the bed of the Atlantic, are the lineal 
descendants of those which formed the chalk in 
England and Europe generally, but that, when that 
was under water, it is very probable that there was 
dry land in what is now the bed of the Atlantic. We 
know, geologically, that there is every probability 
that oscillations have existed in past times, such as 
we know to be going on at the present very slowly. 
Mr. Darwin, many years ago, first brought himself 
the high reputation which now attaches to liis name, 
quite irrespective of the peculiar theories called 
Darwinism, by the observations that he made 
during the voyage of the ‘ Beagle ’ on the coral 
formations of the Southern seas, when he showed 
that there are great areas of subsidence over which 
the bottom of the ocean is sinldng very gradually, 
and, on the other hand, that there are areas of eleva¬ 
tion, where very recently coral ridges have been 
brought up above the surface of the ocean, forming 
cliffs. The great mass of the continent of Europe, 
having the form of chalk, must have been lifted 
up in that manner; and, on the other hand, there 
is every probability that at the same time the bed 
of the Atlantic was going down, and that these little 
Globigerina gradually migrated from one part to an¬ 
other ; and that, therefore, those now covering the 
bed of the Atlantic are the lineal descendants of 
those who lived in Europe during the chalk period; 
there is no difference whatever between them. We 
found from particular specimens of chalk, for it is 
not all chalk that shows the perfect shells, just the 
same differences that you will find in different speci¬ 
mens of old chalk. The larger part of both consists 
of granules of extreme minuteness, requiring high 
powers of the microscope to study them fully; they 
have been termed coccoliths and coccosplieres. My 
friend Mr. Huxley first discovered the coccoliths in 
an examination of the soundings taken for the first 
Atlantic cable; they were afterwards recognized by 
Mr. Sorby in the chalk, and they were also found by 
Dr. Walllch; so that we have this correspondence, 
not merely in the Globigerina, but also in these 
curious little bodies which seem to be related to that 
very widely-diffused animal substance that you have 
heard a great deal about lately under the name of 
protoplasm. I see in the last number of Vanity 
Fair, which contains a most characteristic likeness 
of Professor Huxley,—caricatured certainly, but still 
showing at once his great power and good humour in 
a most remarkable manner,—a statement that he in¬ 
vented protoplasm. Of course, nothing can be more 
ridiculous than such a statement, for protoplasm had 
been talked of for twenty years before Professor 
Huxley mentioned it, and he himself would be the 
first to disclaim any such appropriation; but it is a 
remarkable fact that just at the time when I was 
out on the first of my deep-sea expeditions, Professor 
Huxley, in a communication to the British Asso¬ 
ciation at Norwich, referred to an examination he 
had made of some of the soundings made for the 
Atlantic cable, in which he found that these cocco¬ 
liths and coccosplieres were diffused through a layer 
of protoplasm that does not belong to the Globi¬ 
gerina, and this I have been myself able to confirm, 
and to ascertain that this mud which we brought 
up is, so to speak, a living mass. The wTiole of it is 
alive; not that it is merely a collection or aggrega¬ 
tion of individuals of the Globigerina, but that the 
peculiar tenacity which we observed in this mud. 
its stickiness and the difficulty we found in passing 
it through a sieve, all corresponded with his view, 
that the whole of the mud is a mass of protoplasm, 
through which the Globigerina are distributed, and 
to which these minute bodies belong. A very emi¬ 
nent observer in France, Dr. Ecker, has lately come 
to a conclusion of a similar kind, by liis own ex¬ 
amination of tliis very material, that this is a 
general characteristic of the chalk both of eld and 
