LIFE'S SIMPLEST CHILDR, 2; 
lime -house. The consequence of tl t wher 
a thread has been, there a minute hole like a pin-p 
is left in the shell, and while the animal can di 
itself quite in out of danger, it can also o 
over the shell and take in food. Here, then, we have 
another stratagem taught by life to these her infant 
children. The slime which builds the Globigerina 
or the Rotalia (g) is exactly the same as far as we 
can see as the slime which builds the Miliolite, and 
yet those drops of slime have learnt a new lc 
and each one as it is born stretches out its fine thri 
before constructing its shell, thus providing a tl 
sand openings for the entrance of its food in a h 
not bigger than a grain of sand ! 
And now it only remains for us to ask how 
these wondrous lime-builders have been upon the 
earth. We ask, and ask in vain, for we have 
means of counting the vast ages during which I 
have lived and built. One of the largest and 1 
complicated forms called the Nutnmulite (from . 
a coin, which it resembles), lived 
and died in such millions before 6. 
the Alps or the Carpathians had any ^ 
existence, that whole beds of lime- 
Stone thousands of feet thick and J&v* 
Stretching over hundreds of miles S^il 
are made entirely of its shells ; \g 
while the little Globigerina (</, 1 ^HI^P 
4) and its friends were living and 
multiplying in still more dim a: 
distant periods till their shells aeeu- 1 
mulated into vast beds of chalk, 
When the ancient 1 \.\ • I 
