[19] 



^be jforaminifera of (Balwaij* 



By F. p. Balkwill and R W. Millett, F.R.M.S. 



Plates i, 2, 3, 4. 



IN the summer of 1879, the 25th of the seventh month, business 

 engagements took F, P. Balkwill to Galway, and having an hour 



or two to spare, he went to the shore and scraped up about 

 14 lbs. of fine sand from as many different places as possible : 

 around the base of rocks and large stones which there abound 

 near low water ; from the sides and bottoms of a few small half- 

 tide pools ; and from the flats of white sand which stretch up to 

 high-water mark, and are so hard as scarcely to record a footprint 

 or show a ripple-mark on their fine surface. He used an iron 

 spoon, which was procured for the purpose, and in scraping care- 

 fully took the surface-sand, especially following the wave-lines 

 near high-water mark to secure the Foraminifera which had been 

 floated and left there by the receding tide, and those lines of 

 drainage, where the Foraminifera are similarly deposited by water 

 flowing down the shore in small streamlets. 



On examining this sand after his return to Dublin, he found 

 that it was rich in the smaller forms of Foraminifera, and that in 

 some respects it corresponded more with that he had previously 

 examined from Lough Foyle, and also the adjacent boulder-clay 

 of Limavady junction, than that with which he was more familiar 

 from the Dubhn shores. 



He therefore resolved to obtain a larger suppFy, and from a 

 more extensive shore-surface when next an opportunity might 

 occur. Within a day or two of the same time next year, business 

 again called him to Galway, and after collecting as before, the next 

 day he took a tram-car to Salthill, a suburb on the Bay, about two 

 miles west of "the city of the Tribes." 



Skirting the coast by the road, which is elevated above the 

 beach, he proceeded westward until it diverged to the right, and by 

 a pathway round a wall emerged on to long flats of green sward, 



