APPENDIX. 



Boulder-Clays from the North of Ireland, 



With Lists of Foraminifera. 

 By JOSEPH WRIGHT, F.G.S. 



Some years ago I received a number of packets of Irish Boulder-Clay for 

 microscopical examination, most of them coming from members of the Belfast 

 Naturalists' Field Club. Not being able to examine them at the time, they were 

 laid aside and got overlooked. Coming across them recently, I found that two 

 of the packets were of more than ordinary interest, having been taken from high 

 altitudes in the vicinity of Belfast 1 . 



The foraminifera recorded in the following lists should not be looked on as 

 giving all the forms that occur in these clays, as the process of floating, by which 

 they are obtained, is far from being an exhaustive one -2 , and in no case have more 

 than one or two floatings been taken. Again, these clays are usually not only 

 hard, but often more or less ferruginous, still further increasing the difficulty of 

 washing them down. There can be little doubt that many of these clays, in 

 which foraminifera have not been found, would have given very different resulls 

 could they have been exhaustively examined. 



1 In 1894 foraminifera were also obtained by me in Boulder-Clay collected by 

 the late Mr. Samuel A. Stewart, A. L.S., near the summit of Divis Mountain, 

 1,300 ft. O.D., and by Mr. William Gray, M.R.I. A., on Wolf Hill, 6 JO ft. O.D. 



I would like to mention here that in 1896 and in 1900 I examined for Dr. 

 (ieorge M. Dawson, F. R.S. , Director of the Geological Survey of Canada, 

 seventeen packets of Canadian Boulder-Clay, obtaining foraminifera from eight. 

 All of these, with one exception, were from the third or highest prairie level. In 

 only two of them were the altitudes given, viz., Victoria, 1,900 feet O.D., and 

 twelve miles below Victoria, 1,850 feet O.D. At Moose Jaw, second prairie 

 level, foraminifera were plentiful, 130 specimens being obtained. 



2 To ascertain how far the process of floating could be relied on, for giving the 

 number of foraminifera in Boulder-Clay, one ounce troy of the highly fossiliferous 

 clay from Woodburn, Carrickfergus, was examined exhaustively by this method, 

 with the following result : — the first floating yielded 1,400 specimens, the second 

 166, and twenty-six floatings had to be taken before specimens cersed to come 

 up, the number Ihus obtained was 2,032. The residue examined under the 

 microscope contained 67 additional specimens. Proc. Belfast Nat. Field Club, 

 1901-02, p. no. 



The two sieves used in washing the clays were a galvanized wire sieve, 10 

 meshes to the linear inch, and a miller's silk sieve, 150 meshes to the linear inch. 



