COLLECTION, EXAMINATION, ETC. 297 



deep- sea dredges. Samples of these deposits we may 

 be fortunate enough to secure from the officers of the 

 various expeditions which have been sent out from 

 time to time, or from the cable-laying companies. 

 These deep-sea oozes and muds require to be cleansed 

 from the liner impalpable deposit of coccoliths by 

 washing through a sieve. In order to retain the 

 smallest Foraminifera the sieve should be covered at 

 the bottom with miller's silk, having about 200 

 meshes to the inch. The contents of the sieve, after 

 washing away the finest mud, should be slowly and 

 carefully dried, ready for examination with the micro- 

 scope. If the material to be washed contains many 

 coarse fragments, we must use a sieve of a larger 

 mesh, say 30 or 60 to the inch, to give an inter- 

 mediate separation. 



The soundings taken by an ordinary boat-lead in 

 shallow water are usually mixed with tallow, used 

 for the purpose of arming the hollow end of the 

 sounding lead in securing a sample of the sea- 

 bottom. To clean the material so obtained, the tallow 

 should be melted in a porcelain basin and poured 

 off, and the residue of foraminifera! sand or ooze 

 further cleaned by treatment with benzole. 



The shallow-water foraminiferal sands of our 

 coasts may be gathered in the following way : To 

 secure a favourable collecting ground, we must notice 

 the set of the tides and choose a bay which has a 

 considerable stretch of fine sand. The Foraminifera 

 which live amongst the seaweed between tides, 

 becoming detached, float with the incoming tide, and 



