2,50 SOLID PARTS OF ANIMALS. 



Mr Hatchett examined fossil bones from the rock of Gibraltar. 

 He found them to consist of phosphate of lime without any car- 

 tilage or soft animal part. Their interstices were filled with car- 

 bonate of lime. Hence they resemble exactly bones that have 

 been burnt. They must, then, have been acted upon by some 

 foreign agent ; for putrefaction, or lying in the earth, does not 

 soon destroy the cartilaginous part of bones. On putting a hu- 

 man os humeri, brought from Hythe in Kent, and said to have 

 been taken from a Saxon tomb, into muriatic acid, he found the 

 cartilaginous residuum nearly as complete as in a recent bone. 

 From the experiments of Morichini,* Klaproth,f and Fourcroy, 

 and Vauquelin,! we learn that fossil ivory and teeth of animals 

 frequently contain a portion of fluate of lime. Morichini and 

 Gay-Lussac endeavoured to prove that this salt existed even in 

 recent ivory, and that the enamel of the teeth was almost entirely 

 composed of it But the experiments of Wollaston, Brande, || 

 Fourcroy, and VauquelinlF have shown that there does not exist 

 any sensible portion of fluoric acid in these substances while re- 

 cent. Berzelius, however, has announced that he separated 3 per 

 cent, of fluate of lime from fresh teeth, and that he has detect- 

 ed it also in bones nearly in the same proportion. He even 

 affirms that it exists in urine.** 



When the cartilage of teeth is boiled in water it dissolves 

 with the exception of a minute quantity of fibrous matter, which 

 may be the blood-vessels. The solution possesses the characters 

 of collin, not of chondrin. 



CHAPTER III. 



OF CARTILAGE. 



THE name cartilage is applied to a hard, highly elastic, white 

 substance, often with a pearly lustre, which is attached to or 

 constitutes a part of the texture of bones. The cartilages in the 



Phil. Mag. xxiii. 265. f Gehlen's Jour. iii. 625. 



| Phil. Mag. xxv. 265. Ibid, xxiii. 265. 



|| Nicholson's Journ. xiii. 216. f Phil. Mag. xxv. 266. 

 ** Gehlen's Journ. vi 591. 



