Popular Science Monthly 



513 



A Slab of Sandstone Seventy-Five 

 Million Years Old 



A SLAB of sandstone stands on edge in 

 the bed of an Ohio stream. It has 

 peculiar markings made in times past by 

 ripples when the stone was soft sand. Tlie 

 layer of rock from which this skib was broken 

 extends far back into the bank of the stream, 

 and comes to light again in a quarry a mile 

 distant. In fact when the ripple marks were 

 formed it was the soft sand of an ocean shore. 

 In short the pictured slab is a piece of 

 what geologists call Berea sandstone, formed 

 from ancient sediments at least se\'cnty-five 

 million years ago. To-day the Berea sand- 

 stone beds are of importance because great 

 quantities of oil and gas are found in them. 



A Curious Egg Shaped 

 Like a Dumb-Bell 



THE . freak egg 

 shown in the pic- 

 ture on the right was 

 laid by an ordinary' 

 Leghorn hen. When 

 first laid it was a per- 

 fect dumb-bell in 

 shape, having two 



The inner bone formation of a whale's 

 ear picked up by a Scandinavian fisherman 



yolks, one on each end, connected by a 

 sac enclosing the albuminous portion. 



A slab of sand- 

 rippled Berea 

 sandstone of 

 practically in- 

 calculable age 



The freak egg 

 compared in size 

 with a normal 

 egg laid by the 

 very same hen 



Would You Recognize the Ear- Bone 

 of a Whale If You Saw One? 



HERE is an actual photograph of a 

 natural object. Does it remind you 

 of a human face, exaggerated as in a 

 cartoonist's drawing? 



But it is only one of those freaky 

 resemblances so often seen in natural 

 objects or formations. 



The photograph represents one of the 

 ear-bones of a whale, an object about 

 three times the size of a hen's egg. A 

 whale has a most complicated ear 

 mechanism, composed of several bones 

 and ossicles of different sizes, inter- 

 locked by curious angles and facets. 

 Sometimes one of these bones is cast up 

 on the beach. The photograph repre- 

 sents such an ear-bone picked up by a 

 fisherman on some sandy beach on the 

 Scandinavian peninsula; and by a 

 curious coincident it looks most like the 

 type of face sometimes seen among the 

 lower classes of Scandinavians. 



