A Bottle of Mud. 2 1 3 



Mrs. Robertson's countenance was by this time in 

 a glow of mirth, and she said, 



" Oh ! they are my husband's crabs. They are 

 easily broken. I will take the boxes out for you." 



Lifting up one of the lids with her finger, she 

 brought to view an assortment of various kinds of 

 Crustacea. The officer in the most confused manner 

 said, " All right, all right," and looked at no more of 

 her boxes. 



Towards the end of the year Mr. Robertson read 

 a paper to the Natural History Society, which is 

 worthy of notice. A two-quart bottle of mud had 

 been sent him by Mr. Moore, of the Liverpool Free 

 Museum, which had been dredged by the trawlers 

 about twenty miles off the Great Orme's Head in 

 North Wales. 



"About two-thirds of the bottle was filled with 

 black shiny mud ; above that was a thick layer of 

 light-coloured muddy sand and shelly debris. This, 

 again, was overgrown with a layer of sponge the 

 whole reaching within an inch or so of the neck of 

 the bottle. The bottle itself appeared, from organ- 

 isms attached to it, to have lain in the sea for a 

 considerable time. The black mud of the lower 

 layer was rich in ostracoda and foraminifera, but 

 not so diversified in animal remains as the light- 

 coloured upper portion, which contained the spines 

 of echini, the spines and plates of starfishes in great 

 profusion, besides the remains of other organisms 

 of less frequency, as larval balani, the limbs and 

 plates of two crabs (Porcellana longicornis\ fragments 

 of zoophytes, etc. Of the zoophytes, there were 



