448 A. K Verrill— Marine Fauna off New England Coast. 



grains of siliceous sand, often very fine, cemented by more or 

 less abundant calcareous matter. In some, the grains of sand 

 are largo enough to be easily seen by the nuked eye, and small 

 quartz pebbles often occur in them, but in others the sand* 



grains are so Hue that a microscopic examination is needed to 

 distinguish them. These fine-grained varieties of the rock are 

 often exceedingly compact, heavy, hard and tough, usually 

 grayish or greenish in color. They usually weather brown, 

 from the presence of iron (probably as carbonate). The sand 

 consists mainly of ronnd< i _i is o ,[1 rU vitli some foldspai 

 mica, garnet and magnetite. It is like the loose sand dredged 

 from the bottom in the same region. The calcareous cementing 

 material seems to have been derived mainly from the shells of 

 foraminifera abundantly d sseminati 1 through the sand, just as 

 we find the recent foraminifera, in the same region. In some 

 cases I was able to identify distinct casts of foraminifera, in the 

 rock. In some pieces of the rock distinct fossil shells were 

 found, apparently of recent species (Astarte, etc.). The larger 

 masses appear to have been, originally, concretions in a softer 



hard nodules so exposed that the trawl could pick them up. 

 The age of these rocks may, however, be as great as the pleis- 

 tocene, or even the pliocene, so far as the evidence goes. 

 Moreover, it is probable that they belong to a part of the 

 same formation as the masses of fossild'emus sandy limestone 

 and calcareous sandstone, often brought up by the" Gloucester 

 fishermen, from deep water, on all the fishing banks, from 

 George's to the Grand Bank, as 1 have formerly recorded in 

 this Journal. No rocks of this kind are found on the dry land 

 of this coast. 



ted by us, the 

 from the shore. 

 is composed mainly of very fine sand, largely quartz, with 

 grains of f« • is always 



a considerable percentage of shells of foraminifera, and other 

 calcareous organisms, and also spherical, rod-like, and stellate, 

 sand-covered rhizopods, often in large quantities. In the deeper 



but this ibsent, even'' in 300 to 500 



fathoms. The sand, however, is often so fine as to resemble 

 mud, and is frequently so reported, when the preliminary 



soundings are made and recorded. In many instances, even in 

 our deepest dredgings (over 700 fathoms), and throughout the 

 belt examined, we have taken numerous pebbles and small 

 rounded boulders, of all sizes, up to several pounds in weight, 



sometimes a- with Actinias, etc Probably 



