28 LIFE AND HER CHILDREN. 
of Egypt, they little dreamed that every inch of the 
stone they used was made of the shelly palaces of 
the Nummulite, constructed by little drops of slime 
with a skill and ingenuity far surpassing their own. 
As little do most Parisians think now that the lime- 
stone of which their houses are built is almost entirely 
made up of Orbitolite shells. And still less does the 
country boy as he strolls over the chalk downs of 
Sussex or Hampshire suspect that the chalk under 
his feet is largely composed of shells of the Globi- 
gerina and the other minute forms shown in Figure 
4 ; yet so it is. These minute slime-builders have 
been patiently living and building for untold ages, 
and are doing so still, at the bottom of the Atlantic, 
where the Globigerina lives in such great numbers 
that the falling of the shells through the water down 
to the bottom must be like a constant shower of 
snow, as is proved by the freshness of those brought 
up in the dredge. 
When a little of the chalky mud was taken up from 
the bottom at the time when the Atlantic telegraph 
was laid down, it was found to be almost entirely com- 
posed of Globigerina shells, and this led naturalists, 
who had long known that chalk was formed of shelly 
matter, to rub down some ordinary chalk and examine 
it under the microscope, and there again was our little 
Globigerina, often crushed and worn, but still plainly 
recognisable. So that, astounding as it may seem, 
it is nevertheless true that the vast beds of chalk 
stretching from Ireland to the Crimea, from Sweden 
to Bordeaux, are in great part formed of the dead 
shells of these little drops of slime. 
We have paused so long over the lime-builders 
