Mud Banks on Malabar Coast

Abstract

THE phenomenon of the “mud banks and of tracts of mud suspended in the sea” on certain parts of the Malabar coast, is not, as you suppose (vol.xi. p. 135), unexplained. The late Capt. Mitchell, curator of the Madras Museum, some years ago submitted a quantity of the mud to microscopic examination, and published the results in the Madras Journal of Literature and Science (I have not the work at hand, or I would give you volume and page). He found it to consist almost entirely of Diatomaceæ, of which he detected and distinguished sixty-two species. In the paper in the Madras Journal Capt. Mitchell gives a list of the genera and a numerical list of the specific forms.