Geology and Revelation: or, the Ancient History of the Earth, considered in the geological facts and revealed religion.Molloy, Gerald
Religion
Geology and Revelation: or, the Ancient History of the Earth, considered in the geological facts and revealed religion.
Molloy, Gerald
Bible and geology; Bible and science
That the same process is going on in other parts of the ocean appears
by observations made by Sir Leopold M’Clintock during the cruise of
the Bulldog in 1860. He discovered that a calcareous ooze having the
consistency of putty is spread out over extensive areas between the
Faroe Islands and Iceland, and also between Iceland and Greenland. Of
this mud about ninety-five per cent. is composed of Globigerinæ, which
in some instances were brought up actually living to the surface, and
busily engaged in secreting, by their vital powers, carbonate of lime
from the waters of the sea.[51]
Professor Huxley goes yet one step further in following out the
resemblance between the Chalk Rock that exists in the Crust of the
Earth and the stratum of Chalk that is now growing up in the depths
of the Atlantic. Not only are the Globigerinæ, of which the one is in
great part composed, identical with the animalcules that make up about
nine-tenths of the other, but even the minute granules that constitute
the residue of each formation, correspond in a very remarkable manner.
“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 mere powder and waste of Globigerinæ, but they had a definite
form and size. I termed these bodies Coccoliths, and doubted their
organic nature. Doctor Wallich verified my observation, and added the
interesting discovery that, not unfrequently, bodies similar to these
Coccoliths were aggregated together into spheroids, which he 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 soundings, contains these mysterious
Coccoliths and Coccospheres. Here was a further and a most interesting
confirmation, from internal evidence, of the essential identity of the
Chalk with modern deep-sea mud.”
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