BIOLOGY. 281 



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in the province of Smalaud, and they spin, like silk-worms, a 

 kind of ferruginous cocoons, which constitute the mineral known 

 tinder the name of " lake ore," and which is composed of from 20 

 to GO per cent, of oxide of iron mixed with oxide of manganese, 

 10 per cent, of chloric, and some centimetres of phosphoric acid. 

 The deposits of this mineral may be 200 metres long, from 5 to 

 10 metres wide, and from 8 to 30 inches thick. Rev. de The rap. 

 Med.-Chirurg. 



A Monster Fisli. Dr. Newberry exhibited to the Lyceum of 

 Natural History of New York some fossil fish from Delaware, 

 Ohio. A large number of these had been collected during the 

 summer. In this country the fish begin with the Devonian and 

 corniferous limestone. Above the limestone comes the black slate 

 or Hamilton group. The fishes exhibited were from the black 

 slate of Ohio. One of these, a portion of which was exhibited, 

 must have been more than 25 feet in length, and endowed with a 

 power beyond that possessed by any fish of the present age. Dr. 

 Newberry has given the name of Deinichtliys to this monster. 

 This discovery is in ichthyology what the exhuming of the mam- 

 moth was in zoology, and it is to be hoped that other specimens 

 will be found, no\v that their occurrence in the black slates has 

 been pointed out. 



Fossil Insects. At a meeting of the Boston Society of Natural 

 History, Mr. S. H. Scudder exhibited specimens of the fossil 

 larvae from the Connecticut River sandstone which Prof. Hitchcock 

 had referred to the lace-winged flies, but which Mr. Scudder was 

 inclined to consider larvae of beetles. He also showed a collec- 

 tion of fossil insects recently brought from the tertiary strata of 

 the Rocky Mountains by Prof. Win. Denton, of this city, the only 

 large collection yet made in this countiy. They were found 

 abundantly in two localities in Colorado, about midway between 

 Great Salt Lake and Pike's Peak, and the species from the two 

 localities differed so much in character as to awaken a suspicion 

 that the rocks of one locality might be older than those of the 

 other. The insects consisted mostly of flies and their larvae, be- 

 longing to groups which live in moist localities ; small beetles, one 

 or two ants, a moth, and a species of thrips, allied to the one which 

 attacks our grain, but belonging to a new genus. This last is of 

 especial interest, because it is the first insect of this group which 

 has been found fossil. It is rather remarkable that none of the 

 numerous larvae belong to the perfect insects found in the same 

 rocks. 



Snow Animalcules. A distinction is observable between the 

 taste of snow-water and that of rain-water, and the use of the for- 

 mer in parts of Switzerland is thought to be the cause of peculiar 

 affections of the throat, including goitre. The discovery of nu- 

 merous shrimp-like animalcules in snow-water, by a distinguished 

 chemist, has suggested a possible connection between them and 

 the unwholesomeness of snow-water. They prove at least that 

 life is not restricted to the conditions of temperature with which 

 we usually associate it. The fluids which give mobility within 



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