Abstract
THE Department of Marine Biology of the Carnegie Institution of Washington has issued in this fifth volume of contributions from its laboratory on the Tortugas, near Florida, a number of important papers. Three of these deal with the origin of Oolitic rocks, such as those of the Bahamas and of Florida, and inferentially with the origin of oolitic structure in other deposits. The first paper is the last work of a brilliant English investigator, Mr. G. H. Drew, whose recent death has deprived marine biology of one of the most original and fertile workers, and to whose memory the director of the department, Mr. A. G. Maver, contributes a sympathetic and appreciative notice. Drew's memoir deals with the action of denitrifying bacteria in the tropical seas, and also with the precipitation of calcium carbonate by marine bacteria. Though necessarily incomplete, the results are a fine contribution to the difficult subject of marine bacteriology. They show that the reason why marine plankton is less abundant in the tropics than in temperate seas lies in the rapid and complete action of the denitrifying organisms in the warmer parts of the ocean; and Drew was able also to point to the extraordinary interest and importance of Bacterium calcis in inducing such precipitation of the calcium carbonates as to give rise to nodules of chalk. He suggests that chalk and oolitic rocks have been formed in shallow seas and are being produced round the Bahamas by this peculiar bacterial action.
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Papers from the Tortugas Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Vol. v. Pp. 222+plates+maps. (1914)
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Marine Biology in the Tropics . Nature 93, 465–466 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/093465b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/093465b0