Madam How and Lady Why; or, First lessons in earth lore for children . hirtyyears ago, told the world how he had found manybeautiful fresh kinds; and, more strange still, that someof these kinds were stiU alive at the bottom of theAdriatic, and of the harbour of Alexandria, in Egypt. Then in 1841 a gentleman namedEdward Forbes,—now with God—whose (name will be for ever dear to all wholove science, and honour genius andvirtue,— found in the ^gean Seabed of chalk, he said, full of Fora-minifera, and shells of Pteropods, form-ing at the bottom of the sea. And what are Pteropods ? What you might c
Madam How and Lady Why; or, First lessons in earth lore for children . hirtyyears ago, told the world how he had found manybeautiful fresh kinds; and, more strange still, that someof these kinds were stiU alive at the bottom of theAdriatic, and of the harbour of Alexandria, in Egypt. Then in 1841 a gentleman namedEdward Forbes,—now with God—whose (name will be for ever dear to all wholove science, and honour genius andvirtue,— found in the ^gean Seabed of chalk, he said, full of Fora-minifera, and shells of Pteropods, form-ing at the bottom of the sea. And what are Pteropods ? What you might call sea-moths(though they are not really moths),which swim about on the surface of the vSjlwater, while the right-whales suck themin tens of thousands into the greatwhalebone net which fringes their are drawings of them. 1. Limacina (on whichthe whales feed); and 2. Hyalea, a lovely little thingin a glass shell, which lives in the Mediterranean. But since then strange discoveries have been made,especially by the naval officers who surveyed the bottom. 150 MADAM HOW AND LADY WHY chap. of the great Atlantic Ocean before laying down theelectric cable between Ireland and America. And thisis what they found: That at the bottom of the Atlantic were vast plainsof soft mud, in some places 2500 fathoms (15,000 feet)deep; that is, as deep as the Alps are high. Andmore: they found out, to their surprise, that the oozymud of the Atlantic floor was made up almost entirelyof just the same atomies as make up our chalk,especially globigerinas; that, in fact, a vast bed of chalkwas now forming at the bottom of the Atlantic, withliving shells and sea-animals of the most brilliant colourscrawling about on it in black darkness, and beds ofsponges growing out of it, just as the sponges grew atthe bottom of the old chalk ocean, and were all,generation after generation, turned into flints. And, for reasons which you will hardly understand,men are beginning now to believe that the chal
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