4-6 [Proc. B.N.F.C, 



On the 1 8th February, Mr. Joseph Wright, F,G.S., read a 

 paper on " Flints, and the Foraminifera, Entomostraca ; &c, con- 

 tained in them." 



Mr. Wright stated that previous to 1870 only two species of 

 these minute fossils were known as occurring in the Mesozoic 

 rocks of this district, viz., Dcntalina obliquaa, from our Lias shales, 

 and Orbitolina concava, from the Greensand. In this year Mr. 

 William Gray, M.R.I. A., one of the Honorary Secretaries^ of the 

 Club — well known as an acute observer — found some four or five 

 species of Foraminifera in the Lias shales of Ballintoy, County 

 Antrim, and supplied the reader with a large quantity of the shale 

 for examination. This material had the property, when steeped 

 in water, of falling down into a soft mud, which, when washed and 

 sifted, yielded large numbers of Foraminifera. This mud re- 

 warded Mr. Wright's laborious and exhaustive search with twenty 

 species of these shell-bearing Rhizopods, the names of which 

 were published in an Appendix to the Annual Report of the Club 

 for 1870-71. The reader went on to say that in February, 1872, 

 he had expressed an opinion that Foraminifera, which abound 

 in the English Chalk, and which assume forms so varied and 

 so exquisite, would be found in our flints, if any soft material 

 could be secured from the cavities that so often occur in 

 them. This powdery material being, in fact, a portion of the old 

 sea bottom of the Cretaceous times, and should yield the shelly 

 coverings of the Microzoa of that period. Mr. Thomas Galloway, 

 an indefatigable and successful collector of the fossils that fre- 

 quently occur in these flints, undertook to procure some of the 

 required powder, and next day brought for examination a small 

 quantity obtained from the vicinity of Ligoniel. On carefully 

 washing this powder it yielded Foraminifera, Entomostraca, and 

 sponge spicules in abundance, and in wonderful variety of the 

 most beautiful forms. Here was a discovery of the utmost interest, 

 opening up for this locality an entirely new field of research. Of 

 these Microzoa 142 different kinds have already been discovered in 

 our flints ; a full list of them will be found in the Appendix accom- 



