bottom of deep seas; and that there is not a shadow of reason for
believing that the habits of the _Globigerinoe_ of the chalk differed
from those of the existing species. But if this be true, there is no
escaping the conclusion that the chalk itself is the dried mud of an
ancient deep sea.

In working over the soundings collected by Captain Dayman, I was
surprised to find that many of what I have called the "granules" of that
mud were not, as one might have been tempted to think at first, the more
powder and waste of _Globigerinoe_, but that they had a definite form and
size. I termed these bodies "_coccoliths_," and doubted their organic
nature. Dr. Wallich verified my observation, and added the interesting
discovery that, not unfrequently, bodies similar to these "coccoliths"
were aggregated together into spheroids, which lie termed
"_coccospheres_." So far as we knew, these bodies, the nature of which is
extremely puzzling and problematical, were peculiar to the Atlantic
soundings. But, a few years ago, Mr. Sorby, in making a careful
examination of the chalk by means of thin sections and otherwise,
observed, as Ehrenberg had done before him, that much of its granular
basis possesses a definite form. Comparing these formed particles with
those in the Atlantic soundings, he found the two to be identical; and
thus proved that the chalk, like the surroundings, contains these
mysterious coccoliths and coccospheres. Here was a further and most
interesting confirmation, from internal evidence, of the essential
identity of the chalk with modern deep-sea mud. _Globigerinoe_,
coccoliths, and coccospheres are found as the chief constituents of both,
and testify to the general similarity of the conditions under which both
have been formed.[3]

[Footnote 3: I have recently traced out the development of the