MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 35 



entirely missing, having nothing but dead shells to which 

 to attach themselves. 



" Notwithstanding this peculiarity of most of the 

 dredgings, a few samples may well be compared with our 

 Older Pliocene (Coralline Crag). I would particularly 

 draw attention to certain localities where material almost 

 entirely of organic origin has been obtained. Of these 

 perhaps the most interesting are some samples full of 

 Cellaria fistulosa (found to the south-east of the Calf 

 Sound, 20 fathoms). They are in many respects strikingly 

 like certair parts of the Coralline Crag. The more 

 ordinary type of Coralline Crag, with its extremely varied 

 polyzoon fauna, we cannot yet match in British seas :* it 

 was probably formed, as the mollusca indicate, in a sea 

 several degrees warmer than ours. 



"It was hoped that in the course of these dredgings 

 some light might be thrown on the Tertiary strata under- 

 lying the bed of the Irish Sea, for in the North Sea the 

 dredge occasionally brings up hauls of Tertiary fossils. 

 This expectation has not yet been realised ; but possibly, 

 by dredging in the channels where the submarine scour is 

 greatest, such deposits may yet be reached. It is very 

 important to obtain some knowledge of the Tertiary bed 

 of the Irish Sea, for Irish Pleistocene deposits contain a 

 considerable admixture of extinct forms, which may be 

 derived from Tertiary deposits below the sea- level. The 

 Glacial Drift of Aberdeenshire contains Pliocene Volutes 

 and Astartes, derived from some submarine deposit off 

 the Aberdeenshire coast. The so-called ' Middle Glacial 

 Sands ' of Norfolk are full of shells which I now believe 

 to be derived from some older deposit, probably beneath 

 the sea." 



*See, however, the deposit described on p. 31, where nearly 60 species of 

 Polyzoa are recorded from one haul. — W. A. H. 



