186 THE AMEHICAN MONTHLY [Jul 



I immersed the pole at a few points and found obstruc- 

 tions, a moment later it struck a soft place and I forced 

 it down as far as I could, and then withdrew it. On get- 

 ting it out of the water, 1 found that it had penetrated 18 

 feet of water, and five feet of black oozy mud. This seem- 

 ed to augur for good. I gathered together the single 

 sample thus secured. On taking it home, and by trial un- 

 der the microscope, I found that I had secured a deposit 

 that had escaped my scrutiny for the total period that I 

 had been in pursuit of all kinds of diatoms, more than 22 

 years. This spot had been visited innumerable times in 

 that interval. After I had established the permanency 

 and extent of the deposit, I knew that in the future, a 

 supply would be conveniently accessible to anyone who 

 might desire any quantity, great or small. 



The next stage of work after establishing the deposit, 

 was to secure several pounds of the material. I carried 

 on a rather extensive study of the contents until I became 

 fairly well acquainted with it. In succession I forwarded 

 three study preparations of the new find to Wm. A. Terry 

 of Bristol, Conn., who kindly sent me a list of the prin- 

 cipal species noted by him in the slides, and also a few 

 slides prepared by himself from some of the crude de- 

 posit sent to him. He suggested, however, that he had not 

 observed any species therein that he had not already 

 found in his researches along the Connecticut Shore. 



To Mr. C. L. Peticolas, I forwarded a quantity of the 

 crude "new find" and, in a short while, I had the pleasure 

 of inspecting three of his beautiful preparations. His final 

 conclusion was, that in all of his diatom experiences he 

 had not met with an identical deposit, combining marine 

 and fresh-water forms and covering a so extraordinary 

 number of species. He desired a larger quantity of the 

 material so that he might make an exhaustive study of 

 the curious deposit and in the labels attached to his slides 

 of this series, he adopted the title: "Marine and fresh- 



