“J 
NEW ICHTHYOSAURUS 
GUIDE-LEAFLET TO THE METEORITES IN THE FOYER. 
URING December the Museum issued a Guide-Leaflet under 
the title ‘The Foyer Collection of Meteorites” which gives a 
concise summary of the most important facts regarding meteor- 
ites in general that are of interest to the public and then describes in more 
detail the eight meteoritic falls or finds which are represented in the 
remarkable assemblage of specimens in the Foyer of the Museum. 
The Leaflet is No. 26 in the regular series and may be purchased at the 
door for ten cents. 
THE NEW ICHTHYOSAURUS. 
OSSILS — real fossils, that is — rarely show anything except the 
skeleton or shell or other hard parts of the animal. ‘The finds 
so often reported by the newspapers of petrified animals — 
calves’ heads and birds in a sitting position, for instance — are usually 
merely concretions, formed indeed by natural agencies, which acci- 
dentally mimic the outer form of the animal. The resemblance is 
usually helped out a good deal by the imagination and occasionally by 
the knife of the finder. Such objects are easily distinguishable from 
genuine fossils, because they never show the characteristic internal 
structure of the animals or parts of animals which they resemble. 
Occasionally, however, fossil skeletons show some traces of the skin 
or cartilages of the animal. Quite commonly the scales of fish are pre- 
served showing the entire outline of the body. Less often the skeletons 
of fossil reptiles or mammals show traces of the horny scales of the skin, 
cartilaginous ribs, the wind-pipe or other half-hardened parts, and in 
fossil fish from the Devonian shales of Ohio, even the soft muscular 
fibre has been preserved and can be recognized under the microscope 
by its characteristic structure. 
The most remarkable instance of this kind, however, is in the skele- 
tons of the marine reptile [chthyosaurus obtained in recent years from 
the slate quarries of Holzmaden in Germany. In these fossils, the out- 
lines of the body, fins, paddles and tail are more or less completely pre- 
served as a thin film of black bituminous matter. By dint of the most 
careful and painstaking work, Dr. Hauff has succeeded in developing 
several specimens so that they show the form of the animal with complete- 
