408 A. EARLAND ON FORAMINIFERA. 



of course, upon the abundance of the' foraminifera. I have 

 rarely seen a piece of sandy beach where they were not present, 

 but in most localities they are not sufficiently numerous to repay 

 the trouble of collection. Where the beach is of shingle, the 

 foraminifera can generally be found on the sands exposed below 

 the shingle line at low-tide mark. This is the case at Bognor, 

 where last year I made a splendid gathering, which contained 

 many rare forms. The material was very abundant round the 

 groynes to the west of the pier, while east of the pier there was 

 hardly any. But the best localities for shore gatherings I know of 

 are the bays on the coast of Jersey. Their extreme richness is best 

 shown by the fact that Mr. Halkyard, in his paper on the Forami- 

 nifera of that island, furnishes a list of no less than 127 species. I 

 have myself on several occasions obtained quite a quart of material 

 in St. Brelade's Bay within a couple of hours, and some of the 

 smaller bays are equally rich. It is rather a curious fact in con- 

 nection with this locality that the shallow-water dredgings contain 

 very few specimens, while in Guernsey, only twenty miles away, 

 the converse is the case. The shallow-water dredgings are, in 

 Guernsey, rich in specimens, while shore gatherings can hardly 

 be obtained at all, so poor are the sands in foraminifera. This 

 is no doubt owing to the fact that the water round the Guernsey 

 coast is much deeper than it is round Jersey, and the set of the 

 currents is also towards the latter island. 



In the neighbourhood of estuaries, and where the water is 

 brackish and muddy, the foraminifera are not so easily dis- 

 covered, owing to the comparative scarcity of those porcellaneous 

 forms whose white tests are so conspicuous in most gatherings. 

 The commonest form in such gatherings is Polystomella striato- 

 punctata (Fichtel and Moll), which sometimes forms 60 to 70 

 per cent, of the whole; and this species, when wet, is scarcely 

 noticeable, owing to its colour harmonising with the sand. In 

 such localities the collector must note the points at which 

 other drifted matter has collected, and here he will also find the 

 foraminifera, which can then be collected in the usual manner. 



The first object of the shore collector should be to study the 

 " set " of the tidal currents and the contour of the beach, as 

 it will be seen that everything depends upon them. They alter 

 almost from day to day with the tides ; so that a spot which 

 yields abundant material at one visit may be quite barren a short 



