280 M. Karsten's Observations and 



accidentally made its way out into a servant's room, and lodged 

 itself snug from notice into an old shoe. The alligator was not 

 missed, but, upwards of twelve months after this, it was disco- 

 vered about the house, full of life, and, apparently, scarcely 

 grown bigger ; one of his brothers, that had been kept in a tub 

 and fed plentifully, had grown only a few inches during the 

 same period. 



Few animals emit a stronger odour than the alligator ; and, 

 when it has arrived at great size, you may easily discover one in 

 the woods in passing fifty or sixty yards from it. This smell 

 is highly musky, and so strong, that, when near, it becomes in- 

 sufferable ; but this I never experienced when the animal is in 

 the water, although I have, whilst fishing, been so very close to 

 them, as to throw the cork of my fishing line on their heads, to 

 tease them. In those that I have killed, and, I assure you, I 

 have killed a great many, if opened, to see the contents of the 

 stomach, or take fresh fish out of them, I regularly have found 

 round masses of a hard substance, resembling petrified wood. 

 These masses appeared to be useful to the animal in the process 

 of digestion, like those found in the craws of some species of 

 birds. I have broken some of them with a hammer, and found 

 them brittle, and as hard as stones, which they resemble out- 

 wardly also very much. And, as neither our lakes nor rivers, 

 in the portion of the country I have hunted them in, afford even 

 a pebble as large as a common cgg^ I have not been able to con- 

 ceive how they are procured by the animals, if positively stones, 

 or by what power wood can become stone in their stomachs. 



Observations and Eooperiments on the Different Kinds of Coal, 

 By M. Karsten. 



X HE celebrated Chief of Mines in Prussia, Karsten, some time 

 ago published, in his " Archivjur Bergbau und Hiittenwesen,^'' a 

 valuable series of observations and experiments on the different 

 kinds of coal met with in the mineral kingdom. This import- 

 ant treatise has been reprinted in a separate form, and sent to 

 us. On reading it carefully, we feel convinced that a condensed 

 view of its most important facts and inferences will be read with 



