8).
Along with these occur fragments of the skeletons of other larger creatures, and a certain proportion of the flinty cases of minute animal and vegetable organisms (_Polycystina_ and _Diatoms_).
Though many of the minute animals, the hard parts of which form the ooze, undoubtedly live at or near the surface of the sea, others, probably, really live near the bottom; and the ooze itself forms a congenial home for numerous sponges, sea-lilies, and other marine animals which flourish at great depths in the sea.

There is thus established an intimate and most interesting parallelism between the chalk and the ooze of modern oceans.

Both are formed essentially in the same way, and the latter only requires consolidation to become actually converted into chalk.

Both are fundamentally organic deposits, apparently requiring a great depth of water for their accumulation, and mainly composed of the remains of _Foraminifera_, together with the entire or broken skeletons of other marine animals of greater dimensions.

It is to be remembered, however, that the ooze, though strictly representative of the chalk, cannot be said in any proper sense to be actually _identical_ with the formation so called by geologists.