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Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays by Thomas Henry Huxley
page 83 of 318 (26%)
even many of those which are swallowed by other animals, may retain much
of their protoplasmic matter when they reach the depths at which the
temperature sinks to 34° or 32° Fahrenheit, where decomposition must
become exceedingly slow.

Another consideration appears to me to be in favour of the view that the
_Globigerinoe_ and their allies are essentially surface animals. This is
the fact brought out by the _Challenger's_ work, that they have a
southern limit of distribution, which can hardly depend upon anything but
the temperature of the surface water. And it is to be remarked that this
southern limit occurs at a lower latitude in the Antarctic seas than it
does in the North Atlantic. According to Dr. Wallich ("The North Atlantic
Sea Bed," p. 157) _Globigerina_ is the prevailing form in the deposits
between the Faroe Islands and Iceland, and between Iceland and East
Greenland--or, in other words, in a region of the sea-bottom which lies
altogether north of the parallel of 60° N.; while in the southern seas,
the _Globigerinoe_ become dwarfed and almost disappear between 50° and
55° S. On the other hand, in the sea of Kamschatka, the _Globigerinoe_
have vanished in 56° N., so that the persistence of the _Globigerina_
ooze in high latitudes, in the North Atlantic, would seem to depend on
the northward curve of the isothermals peculiar to this region; and it is
difficult to understand how the formation of _Globigerina_ ooze can be
affected by this climatal peculiarity unless it be effected by surface
animals.

Whatever may be the mode of life of the _Foraminifera_, to which the
calcareous element of the deep-sea "chalk" owes its existence, the fact
that it is the chief and most widely spread material of the sea-bottom in
the intermediate zone, throughout both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans,
and the Indian Ocean, at depths from a few hundred to over two thousand
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