THE BREAKING- OF THE SHROPSHIRE MERES. 
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breaking, a very scanty number of specimens of Anabcena Hassallii, 
Nord. and Witt., were found in water gathered July 15tli, 1885. 
These, however, may be accounted for by their passing into it 
through a narrow channel connecting it with Kettle Mere, which is 
often observed to break. It is forty feet deep in the middle, and has 
a hard bottom of gravel, to which, possibly, may be attributed its 
greater purity. 
Bomere Pool, three miles south of Shrewsbury, lies in rather a 
deep depression, surrounded for the greater part by a wood, and is 
very picturesque. I first learned that this was breaking September 
7th, 1881, and on visiting it found the water of a deep copperas- 
green colour, with floating masses of scum formed in all the little 
calm bays on the lee shore. I saw it again on the 15th of the same 
month, and gathered a small quantity of the water, which contained 
two species of algae intermixed, viz., Anabcena Hassallii , Nord. and 
Witt., and Ccelospliceriuni Kutzingianum , Nag. On the 23rd of 
February, 1882, I was induced to visit this pool again, and was 
much surprised to find at this unusual time of year that it was 
breaking ; a fact never observed before. The keeper and his wife, 
who had lived for nine years near to it, and depended on it for their 
supply of drinking water, had never before known it to break in the 
early part of the year. 
Cole Mere is one of the most beautiful of the group of meres 
near Ellesmere, lying about two miles south-east of the town. It is 
second, in point of size, to Ellesmere Mere, occupying an area of 
seventy-one acres. Here those remarkable productions, locally 
known as “ hedgehogs,” are found, formed of dead larch leaves 
slenderly held together by gelatinous algae and entangled fibres of 
grass, &c., rolled by the action of the water into round or oblong 
masses, from three or four inches to eight or ten inches in diameter ; 
they are often washed up on the margin of the mere. This mere 
is also remarkable (as is Whitemere) for the growth of the curious 
alga, Cladophora cegagropila (Linn.), known as moor-balls, or moss- 
balls, which are soft, green, spongy, and about the size of an apple. 
I need not say that these have no connection with the breaking. 
It was on August 25th, 1882, that the first examination of the 
June, 1893. 
