l888.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 1 fi-^ 



Meteorite were boiled, first in nitrir acid, then in sulphuric, and 

 finally in nitro-muriatic acid. This removed the iron, magnetite, 

 olivine, enstatite, etc., leaving, as a residue, some small, trans- 

 parent bodies, twelve in all. I herewith exhibit some of these. 

 One, which was unfortunately lost, was either a cube, with faces 

 of the tetro-hexahedron, or else a distorted trigonal tris-octahe- 

 dron. These exhibited are very much distorted, and two re- 

 semble the latter form. This is one of the principal forms of 

 the Diamond. The colors are either pink or light brown. The 

 size has prevented me from trying the hardness. But, having 

 scratched nine sapphires with pieces of the Meteorite, producing 

 the fine, delicate lines characteristic of the Diamond, there can 

 be little doubt that these bodies, the only residue, were those 

 which produced the scratches." 



SECTION OF- BONE OF THE FINBACK WHALE. 



The Rev. J. L. Zabriskie : 



" The specimen is taken from bone, collected from the skele- 

 ton of a Finback Whale, 62 feet long, which was brought ashore 

 and cut up for oil at Fisher's Island, at the eastern extremity of 

 Long Island Sound, in 1869. 



" The skeleton of the Whale is remarkable for the pairs of 

 vertebral plates, or epiphyses, situated between the vertebral 

 joints. These plates never become consolidated with the body 

 of the adjoining bone, as they do usually in other mammalia. 

 They have one surface nearly fiat, and deeply pitted for the at- 

 tachment of cartilage, and have the other surface slightly convex 

 and comparatively smooth. The flat, rough surface is turned 

 towards, and is attached to its own joint of the vertebral column; 

 while the convex, smooth surface is opposed to, and articulates 

 with the convex surface of another plate, belonging to the suc- 

 ceeding vertebra. 



" The plate here exhibited, from which the section was taken, 

 was situated towards the hinder extremity of the skeleton. It 

 is comparatively small, being about J/g of an inch thick by 10 

 inches in width, over its longer diameter. In the thorax of the 

 same skeleton the plates were much larger. For they corres- 

 pond in size with the diameter of that portion of the vertebral 

 column to which they belong. 



