THE MUSEUM. 



107 



This is especially true of the Coleop- 

 tera, particularly of the Curcurlios and 

 Elatorids and sometimes of the Cerain- 

 bycidae and Carabidae. They may be 

 found in rotten stumps and under leaves 

 near the margins of boggy or swampy 

 ground, as they seek the dryer ground 

 before the winters free/e. 



As the Coleoptera are easy to cap- 

 ture and handle and comparatively 

 easy to preserve they are great favor- 

 ites with collectors and indeed I do not 

 know of any more interesting objects 

 of natural history than these. With 

 their endless forms and varieties, in- 

 teresting habits and obscure transform- 

 ations, they afford excellent material 

 to work upon. They usually appear 

 the latter part of April, and continue 

 until June, when the number of spec- 

 ies gradually diminish. 



In spring the collector must not neg- 

 lect to pay a visit to the creek or river 

 during its annual rise for many treas- 

 ures may be found that could not have 

 been obtained otherwise perhaps. 

 Numecous insects are driven out of 

 their snug hiding places by the water 

 and forced to seek safety on drier 

 ground. The writer once found a 

 magnificent specimen of Walking- 

 stick (Phasmidae) that He had searched 

 for the whole season before without 

 success, floating by on a piece of bark, 

 during a rise in the river. 



In conclusion I would say to my 

 schoolmates at nature's school, to take 

 their note- book and "game-bag" and 

 take a trip to the country during the 

 first warm days of early spring. Their 

 industry will be surely rewarded if it 

 cannot be said of them as of a potato, 

 "eyes they have but they see not." 



Ozocerite or Mineral Wax. 



Ozocerite, from the Greek, "Ozein," 

 smell, and "keros," wax, i? a mineral 

 consisting of carbon and hydrogen, and 

 resembles paraffin, or dirty wax. Its col- 

 or is generally yellowish brown. It is 

 found in Turkistan, east of the Caspian 

 sea;in the Carpathian Mountains in Aus- 



tria; in the Apennines in Italy; in Texas 

 and California, and specimens have re- 

 cently been found in New Jersey. Com- 

 mercially, it is worked chieily in Austria 

 and other portions of Europe, although 

 we have in Utah a larger deposit than 

 in any other place. 



Ozocerite from Baku was found by 

 Peterson to have a specific gravity of 

 0.903, and fused at 700 C. By dis- 

 tillation it gave: 



Paraffin 

 Gas - 

 Coke 



81.8 



' 13-8 



• - 4-4 



1 00.0 



Ozocerite from Zietriska in Moldau, 

 had a specific gravity of 0.946, fusing 

 point 20.50 o C. , and distilled at 

 30® o C. It occurs in thin layers of 

 brown to yellowish-brown color. Its 

 structure is leafy, and its fracture re- 

 sembles mother-of-pearl. It dissolves 

 in turpentine, naphtha, and fatty oils, 

 but little in ether or boiling alcohol, 

 and has a weak odor of coal oil. 



"Earth wax," or ozocerite, has been 

 supposed to be a residuum of oil that 

 has evaporated. It is dug out with 

 picks and shovels, and is about the con- 

 sistency of clay. The shafts are from 

 350 to 600 feet deep, and very close 

 together; so close tnat in a piece of 

 land containing not over fifty acres, 

 there are ten thousand shafts. The 

 walls of these shafts are curbed with 

 timbers, but at the depth to which 

 they go they are so very thin that scar- 

 cely a day passes without some of them 

 caving in, breaking the timbers like 

 pipe-stems, and often burying human 

 beings beneath the great masses of 

 earth. The earth taken out of the 

 shafts is carted away a short distance 

 and dumped. These huge piles of 

 earth which accumulate exert such a 

 pressure near the honey-combed land, 

 that the wax is often forced out of the 

 cracks with such rapidity that the work- 

 men are unable to save themselves. 

 It once happened in a shaft 321 feet 

 deep, that the entire shaft was sudden- 



