A new apparatus, the "buret cylinder", was constructed in order to increase the efficiency of the size analysis of fine-grained sediments. Its uncomplicated operation and automatic levelling enables working in series of ten samples or more at a time. This method, an improvement of the "pipet method", works with an accuracy comparable to that of the "Atterberg method".An ALGOL-program was compiled to compute all data, obtained from the granulometric analysis of the entire sediment. In the output, the numerical parameters are printed out and a simple frequency and a cumulative diagram is plotted. The computer program works for grain sizes from -6 phi (64 mm 0 ) to +9 phi (2 p 0). Two procedures can be applied alternatively: (a) sievingburet analysis; and (b) sievingvisual accumulation tubeburet analysis.