- A great part of the bottom of the Mediterranean is covered with blue muds, frequently with a yellow upper layer containing a considerable proportion of carbonate of lime, chiefly shells of pelagic Foraminifera.
The terrigenous deposits consist of blue muds, red muds (abundant along the coast of Brazil, where the amount of organic matter present is insufficient to reduce the iron in the matter brought down by the great rivers to produce blue muds), green muds and sands, and volcanic and coral detritus.
The coarser particles of the sediments are deposited near the shore as gravels, sand and muds, but the very fine particles remain in suspension in the colloidal form, and some of this may be acted upon by marine bacteria or (it is surmised) even utilized by diatoms as a source of silica.
Littoral Deposits (between high andSands, gravels, muds, &c. low-water marks) Kriimmel prefers to simplify this by grouping the deposits in a single category arranged according to their position into: (a) Littoral (including Murray and Renard's littoral and shallow water deposits [II.
De Pourtales pointed out in 1870; they consist of remains of deep-sea corals, serpulae, echinoderms and mollusca united Sands, gravels, muds, &c.
The best raw materials for the preparation of thallium are the flue-dusts produced industrially in the roasting of thalliferous pyrites and the "chamber muds" accumulating in vitriol-chambers wrought with such pyrites; in both it is frequently associated with selenium.
Muds, sands, grits and conglomerates are the predominant types.
In some regions, notably in the Baltic province and in parts of the United States, the rocks still retain their original horizontality of deposition, the muds are scarcely indurated and the sands are still incoherent; but in most parts of the world they bear abundant evidence of the many movements and stresses to which they have been exposed through so enormous a period of time.
Off the African coasts there are large deposits of Glauconitic sands and muds at depths down to moo fathoms, and on banks where coral formation occurs there are large deposits of coral muds and sands.
Thus, we find them more frequently, folded, tilted and cleaved; the muds have become shales, slates, phyllites or schists, the grey and red sands and conglomerates have become quartzites and greywackes, while the limestones are very generally dolomitized.