NOTES AND NEWS. 8j 



Mr. 'Albert F. Woods has an interesting account of skeleton leaves 

 and their production in Science for December 3otb. By placing a leaf 

 in an aquarium in which there are minute bivalve crustaceans of the 

 family Cyprididte, the entire soft portions of the leaf will be removed 

 in a short time, leaving it beautifully skeletonized. These little 

 animals may be found in almost every pool or pond, and seem to 

 thrive best in water kept fresh by the presence of algae or other aquatic 

 plants. The process of skeletonizing a large leaf occupies about four 

 weeks 



In the last number of Medians' Monthly there is a note sent by a 

 correspondent relating to some so-called Ancient Corn, the authen- 

 ticity of which is righttully questioned by the editor of that journal. 

 We have seen specimens of this ' ' corn, " and it is nothing more nor less 

 than a form of quartz crystallization in which the crystals are arranged 

 around a central axis in a manner much simulating the arrangement of 

 kernelsof cornon the "cob" as observed in a transverse section of the 

 ear. This calls to mind the persistence with which items of this kind orig- 

 inate and make the rounds of the popular press to the apparent con- 

 founding of all accepted scientific ideas, and in this connection we 

 take the liberty of quoting from a letter of some years ago, simply to 

 show a process of reasoning outside of a basis of scientific knowledge: 

 " * * I discovered fossil corn in a conglomerate rock formation 

 composed of lime and silica. The corn is incrusted in the upper por- 

 tion of the rock by a surface drift, evidently the work of the Deluge 

 which Moses speaks of. The corn is of the flint gourd variety, and is 

 as pretty a specimen of that variety as I ever looked upon. It was evi- 

 dently planted, husked and left lying in the field in heaps [The locality is 

 Pennsylvania!] by the antediluvians more than 4,000 years ago when the 

 Deluge came on, and to-day yet remains miraculously preserved as a wit- 

 ness of that cataclysm to the present generation. The silica which per- 

 meated the corn was held in solution, and the facets of each grain termi- 

 nate prismatically (a matter which I am yet unable to understand).* * * 

 But the specimen leaves no doubt that it has been corn, and crystal- 

 ized by silica permeating it while the silica was in solution. The corn 

 having been of less specific gravity than the mineral substance in 

 which it is incrusted, now forms the upper portion of the rock. It 

 settles one important fact in geology — silica was in solution at the 

 time of the Deluge. It permeated the corn and now forms crystalized 

 grains of corn. That gives a key to unlock the mystery of — How did 

 the moss get into the agate ? The moss grew during the antediluvian 

 period. Silica in solution or silica water settled in small pools where 

 the moss grew, and crystallized around the moss, thus producing the 

 agate." 



