NORTHUMBERLAND AND DURHAM. 8/ 



The zoology of these pools formed the subject of a paper by Mr. 

 Gr. S. Brady, read before the British Association in 1863, and 

 printed in the sixth volume of the Transactions of the Tyneside 

 Naturalists' Field-Club (p. 95) ; but through an oversight the 

 species of Foraminifera found in them were not enumerated. 

 Since that time I have visited the spot and collected material of 

 every sort likely to repay examination. The Foraminifera in- 

 habiting brackish water have received but little attention hitherto ; 

 and probably, if they were searched for, it would be found that 

 they are not as dependent on marine saline matters for their 

 existence as has been generally supposed. The pools alluded to 

 are situated a couple of miles above Sunderland (perhaps two 

 miles and a half from the sea) near the point where a little 

 stream discharges itself into the Biver Wear, in low marshy 

 ground, which in occasional floods, or at exceptionally high tides, 

 is covered with water. The proportion of saline matters they 

 contain of course varies considerably, and is dependent on the 

 relative supply of fresh water from rain and drainage and of salt 

 water from the occasional tidal overflow ; but commonly the 

 water is scarcely brackish to the taste, and when examined by 

 my brother, the amount of chlorides in the Foraminifera-yielding 

 pools was but little more than 1 per cent., or less than one-third 

 the amount present in sea- water. Notwithstanding this, the mud 

 collected from them, after careful washing, revealed astonishing 

 numbers of Foraminifera, chiefly specimens of Poly stomella striato- 

 punetata and Qitinqneloculina ag glut-mans, a few specimens of 

 Trochammina inflata, and a single Globigerina bulloides. There 

 are at intervals along the lower portions of our coast, places in 

 which brackish water collects in a similar way, but they are 

 generally nearer to the sea, and have scarcely the amount of zoo- 

 logical interest that pertains to the one just alluded to; they 

 promise however to repay examination, at any rate, so far as 

 their Bhizopodal fauna is concerned. I have very recently 

 examined some mud from pools of this sort near the mouth of 

 the "Wansbeck with gratifying results. The "very rare" Tro- 

 chammina inflata is here the prevailing Foraminifer, Polyatonielh: 



