February ll, 1871.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
645 
recent formation; they correspond precisely in all 
tlieir particulars. 
With regard to the other animals that are found 
imbedded in it, those fossils which give the par¬ 
ticular geological character to the epoch, it is not my 
intention to say anything more than merely to men¬ 
tion that whilst a great number of these have un¬ 
doubtedly become extinct, of those which flourished 
during the cretaceous period when the great chalk 
deposits of Europe were being formed, we have 
found a considerable number, and the researches of 
our American friends in the Gulf of Mexico are add¬ 
ing largely to the number of forms which exist in 
the old chalk deposit, so that we believe these to be 
the descendants, though modified in the lapse of 
time, of those which flourished during that period. 
There is some discussion at present going on as to 
how far my friend Dr. Wy ville Thomson was right in 
his assertion, that we may be considered as still 
living in the cretaceous period. He enunciated that 
doctrine on the basis I have mentioned to you, that 
there is every probability that this great chalk forma¬ 
tion going on in the bed of the Atlantic is continuous 
with that which formed the Dover clifl's and the 
great chalk deposits of central Europe, and that a 
large proportion of the animals that are now found 
in their deposit may be regarded as the descendants 
of those which flourished during the cretaceous 
period. But as Sir Charles Lyell has very justly 
pointed out in his recent book, ‘ The Students’ 
Manual of Geology,’ the termination of what we are 
accustomed to call the geological cretaceous period 
was marked by the disappearance of so many types 
of winch the fossil remains are found in the'old 
chalk, that geologically it must be considered as the 
conclusion of that period. This is really very much 
a question of words after all, like the question which 
I remember some twenty years ago agitated our law 
courts, arising out of a claim to very valuable pro¬ 
perty which had been purchased with a view to 
making paraffine oil, and the question was whether 
a certain substance was or was not coal. Almost all 
the chemists and geologists in England and a great 
many mineralogists were carried down to Edinburgh 
to give evidence on the subject, but the difficulty was 
to define what was coal. And so the difficulty here 
is to define what is meant by a geological period. 
All I care about is to have it admitted that this mo¬ 
dern chalk deposit is not a mere repetition of the old 
chalk, but is a continuation of it on a different area ; 
many of the animals having migrated into that area, 
while on the other hand, many no doubt have died 
out. 
Now I am anxious to show you what is the nature 
of the animalcules of which tliis Globigerina is an 
example, because among the many efforts of modern 
microscopic study I do not know anything more re¬ 
markable or more important in its general bearing 
on physiological doctrines than the proper apprecia¬ 
tion of the nature of their—I can scarcely call it 
structure or organization, for it is a remarkable fact 
that they have nothing that can be called organiza¬ 
tion or structure. In some way they make these 
beautiful shells, but the soft body of the animal that 
makes them is apparently destitute entirely of any¬ 
thing that can be called organization. That I shall 
now’ explain to you. On the wall are some drawings 
of these creatures, and amongst them you see some 
remarkably regular forms. Here is a piece of num- 
mulitic limestone, of which the pyramids of Egypt 
are built, and you notice the regular manner in which 
the nummulites or small discs, so called from being 
in appearance like small pieces of money, are ar¬ 
ranged, the -whole surface being divided regularly 
into chambers, which are grouped in a spiral start¬ 
ing from a centre. We find several forms of that 
kind here, in the Cristellaria, the shells of which are 
formed of sand. The creatures have not the power 
of exuding a shelly substance from their bodies, but 
they make a calcareous shell by gluing together 
grains of sand, and building them up with extreme 
regularity in their spiral forms. They are very much 
like a nautilus; and I remember the time when they 
were universally reputed to be minute nautili, and 
were always so arranged, as for instance, in Cuvier’s 
‘ Animal Kingdom,’ under the Cephalopods. But an 
eminent French naturalist, "who, if my impression 
is correct, was a pliarmacien, residing somewhere on 
the seacoast of Brittany, M. de Jardin, applied 
liimself to the study of these bodies, and after 
some time he came to a conclusion, which has been 
since confirmed by the most careful and prolonged 
scrutiny. He degraded these animals at once from 
being amongst the highest of the invertebrate sub- 
kingdom, the Cephalopods, of which the nautilus 
stands at the top (the highest organization below 
fishes), down to the very lowest, and he was perfectly 
right in so doing. He found that the body of these 
animals consists of nothing but a soft jelly-like sub¬ 
stance, which we now call protoplasm. He called it 
sarcode, which was a very good name, meaning 
something which is like flesh and answers the pur¬ 
pose, but is not flesh—a sort of rudimentary flesh. 
The word protoplasm w r as first invented by the bo¬ 
tanists, and we now know that the sarcode of De 
Jardin and the protoplasm of the botanists are the 
same thing exactly. Tliis sarcode itself can be ob¬ 
tained when we have the fresh animals by just dis¬ 
solving the shell in acid, and we then get the sarcode 
body; here are representations of them seen both 
as opaque and as transparent objects. You see it 
has nothing like a structure or organization, but con¬ 
sists of separate little balls, so to speak, or segments 
progressively increasing. The original animal was 
the smallest of these segments, and it formed one 
chamber or shell; then by a gradually growing-up 
process which I shall describe, it has formed another 
segment, which in its turn formed a shell around it; 
then another larger segment, and so on. We find gene¬ 
rally, from eight to twelve or more of these segments 
in one Globigerina. Then any further increase will 
take place in such a manner that the bud will sepa¬ 
rate and give rise to a new and distinct individual. 
That, however, is not necessarily so, for I shall pre¬ 
sently show you that in a remarkable fossil which 
has been discovered within the last few years in 
Canada, the Eozoon Canadense, which is the earliest 
of which we have any knowledge, the extension 
takes place continuously by what is called continuous 
germination, the difference being just that between 
a plant and a tree. A plant has a limited growth. 
It does not increase by budding beyond a certain 
extent, and an annual plant dies at the end of the 
year, and there is an end of it, as an individual, 
though its seed may spring up again. On the other 
hand, a tree goes on putting out fresh buds every 
year; old parts gradually die away, but new and 
fresh parts come into existence by this extension 
from the original primordial stock. In the same way 
it is (piite conceivable, as you will at once see, that 
