In addition to flint-producing animals, we have also the great group of fresh-water and marine microscopic plants known as Diatoms, which likewise secrete a siliceous skeleton, often of great beauty.  The skeletons of Diatoms are found abundantly at the present day in lake-deposits, guano, the silt of estuaries, and in the mud which covers many parts of the sea-bottom; they have been detected in strata of great age; and in spite of their microscopic dimensions, they have not uncommonly accumulated to form deposits of great thickness, and of considerable superficial extent.  Thus the celebrated deposit of “tripoli” ("Polir-schiefer”) of Bohemia, largely worked as polishing-powder, is composed wholly, or almost wholly, of the flinty cases of Diatoms, of which it is calculated that no less than forty-one thousand millions go to make up a single cubic inch of the stone.  Another celebrated deposit is the so-called “Infusorial earth” of Richmond in Virginia, where there is a stratum in places thirty feet thick, composed almost entirely of the microscopic shells of Diatoms.

Nodules or layers of flint, or the impure variety of flint known as chert, are found in limestones of almost all ages from the Silurian upwards; but they are especially abundant in the chalk.  When these flints are examined in thin and transparent slices under the microscope, or in polished sections, they are found to contain an abundance of minute organic bodies—­such as Foraminifera, sponge-spicules, &c.—­embedded in a siliceous basis.  In many instances the flint contains larger organisms—­such as a Sponge or a Sea-urchin.  As the flint has completely surrounded and infiltrated the fossils which it contains, it is obvious that it must have been deposited from sea-water in a gelatinous condition, and subsequently have hardened.  That silica is capable of assuming this viscous and soluble condition is known; and the formation of flint may therefore be regarded as due to the separation of silica from the sea-water and its deposition round some organic body in a state of chemical change or decay, just as nodules of phosphate of lime or carbonate of iron are produced.  The existence of numerous organic bodies in flint has long been known; but it should be added that a recent observer (Mr Hawkins Johnson) asserts that the existence of an organic structure can be demonstrated by suitable methods of treatment, even in the actual matrix or basis of the flint.[6]

[Footnote 6:  It has been asserted that the flints of the chalk are merely fossil sponges.  No explanation of the origin of flint, however, can be satisfactory, unless it embraces the origin of chert in almost all great limestones from the Silurian upwards, as well as the common phenomenon of the silicification of organic bodies (such as corals and shells) which are known with certainty to have been originally calcareous.]