55 



NOTES on some FOKAMINIFEKA from the ElVER 

 MERSEY. 



By E. Buhgess. 



[Read November 14tli, 1890.] 



Last year Mr. I. C. Thompson gave me a bottle full of a 

 black mud to examine for Forarninifera. The mud had 

 been collected at low-water in the Mersey, near Aigburth, 

 on the Lancasliire side, where the exposed part is all soft 

 mud. It is of importance with gathering's of Foraminifera 

 to give the local conditions, and to determine, if possible, 

 which of the forms are associated together in a living state 

 and which have been washed from greater distances and 

 depths. Both J. D. Siddall {" Foraminifera of the River 

 Dee," Proc. Chester Soc. Nat. Sci., part II., 1878) and 

 H. B. Brady (in Brady, Robertson and Brady on 

 " Ostracoda and Foraminifera of Tidal Rivers," Ann. and 

 Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 4, vol. vi., 1870, pp. 273—306, pis. 

 xi., xii.) have given us information of the greatest impor- 

 tance on the brackish water Foraminifera. The wonder- 

 ful variety of texture, size, and form that is to be found 

 is surprising. The tests or shells are formed both from 

 the lime to be extracted from the water (where the water 

 seems to contain but very little lime, the envelope becomes 

 of a chitinous character), and also from lime in the shape 

 of minute grains cemented together, along with spicules, 

 grains of sand, and at times smaller foraminiferous shells 

 also agglutinated together, each species having its own 

 peculiar form of shell, 



