When the marvellous results of recent deep-sea dredgings were first made known, and it was found that chalky foraminiferal earth is yet accumulating in the Atlantic, with sponges and sea urchins, resembling in many respects those whose remains exist in the chalk, the fact was expressed by the statement that we still live in the chalk period. Thus stated the conclusion is scarcely correct. We do not live in the chalk period, but the conditions of the chalk period still exist in the deeper portions of the sea. We may say more than this. To some extent the conditions of the Laurentian period still exist in the sea, except in so far as they have been removed by the action of the Foraminifera and other limestone builders. To those who can realize the enormous lapse of time involved in the geological history of the earth, this conveys an impression almost of eternity in the existence of this oldest of all the families of the animal kingdom. We are still more deeply impressed with this when we bring into view the great physical changes which have occurred since the dawn of life. When we consider that the skeletons of Eozoon contribute to form the oldest hills of our continents; that they have been sealed up in solid marble, and that they are associated with hard crystalline rocks contorted in the most fantastic manner; that these rocks have almost from the beginning of geological time been undergoing waste to supply the material of new formations; that they have witnessed innumerable subsidences and elevations of the continents; and that the greatest mountain chains of the earth have been built up from the sea since Eozoon began to exist,--we acquire a most profound impression of the persistence of the lower forms of animal life, and know that mountains may be removed and continents swept away and replaced, before the least of the humble gelatinous Protozoa can finally perish. Life may be a fleeting thing in the individual, but as handed down through successive generations of beings, and as a constant animating power in successive organisms, it appears, like its Creator, eternal.