144 1h e Irish Naturalist. July, 



ZOOLOGY. 



Foraminifera. 



I wish to plead for further workers in this most interesting and little- 

 worked branch of scientific research. The British Isles can boast of 

 probably not more than some twenty serious students of this subject. 

 Yet the study of Forauiiuifera is so engrossing and full of interest that 

 anyone with the least taste for research, or with even a modified tendency 

 towards collecting, would only have to take a cursory glance through a 

 microscope at some of these minute wonders of the marine floor to be 

 at once seized with the desire to know and see more of them. 



A great advantage to anyone endeavouring to decide on some way of 

 filling leisure time is that the cost of the apparatus and material necessary 

 to study Foraminifera is not great. From ^12 to ^15, or less, will obtain 

 practically all that is necessary for commencement. The requirements 

 are : a microscope, binocular for choice, with inch and f -inch power ; a 

 condenser, some microscope slides, a fine camel's-hair brush, and some 

 marine ooze, mud or sand. Other small requisites can be obtained for a 

 mere trifle. 



The sea bottom from almost any place is generally found to be teeming 

 with these minute animals or their tests, otherwise shells. There are 

 very few of us without the means of obtaining a sample from our own 

 coasts, which have not yet been adequately searched, as it is proved by the 

 continual additions to the list of Irish Foraminifera. Therefore, without 

 going further, plenty of interesting home research remains to be done 

 by earnest workers. Fossil Foraminifera, if not so numerous, present 

 another sphere of action, of great geological interest. For example, 

 suppose one has obtained from the Arctic regions a sample of some 

 marine deposit of bygone days. Search among the material is practically 

 sure of reward by finding specimens of Foraminifera, of course in a fossil 

 condition, now only represented in its living or, as it is termed "recent 

 state," in the Equatorial regions of the earth. The inference to be drawn 

 is that where the specimen on the slide was living it occurred in a 

 climate not far removed in temperature from that of our Equatorial 

 regions, where the identical species is now to be obtained in a living form, 

 unless our material was carried by some pre-historic Gulf Stream, to the 

 Arctic regions, and so deposited. Is not an enigma such as this enough 

 to induce anyone to take up the study of those wonderful microscopic 

 shells, and try to prove by analogy, circumstantial evidence, or some 

 means why a species should be found fossil and living in such widely 

 differing temperatures ? 



I shall be most happy at any time to help, so far as I can, by advice or 

 any other means in my power, anyone who may care to look even into 

 the fringe of this far too little known study. 



W. B. Thornhil,^. 

 Castle Bellingham. 



