1901] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 201 
husks, a spiral vessel from vegetable tissue, and several 
small ruby-colored, highly refractive bodies which I could 
not recognise. 
Scattered throughout the collection of sediment were. 
oval bodies resembling starch corpuscles, such as may be 
found in potatoes, but as they did not give the character- 
istic black cross under polarised light, it was decided they 
could not be starch; further, any starch would have been 
reduced to the amorphous condition found in the general 
mass of the meal. Their true nature was afterwards made 
evident by finding a flat plate of cartilage about 1-30th of 
an inch square, from the free edges of which these oval © 
bodies were being gradually extended, so, that by the dis- 
integration of this substance these bodies in their isolated 
condition proved a puzzle. Here, then, was evidence that 
the particles of food locked up in this tartar could be re- 
cognised after a lapse of time such as must have occurred 
since the Stone Age in which they were massicated. No 
evidences were found indicative of the use of fire in cook- 
ing the food; it must therefore have been eaten raw. 
Each drop as it was examined was covered by a circu- 
lar cover-glass of th of an inch diameter and carefully 
put aside ; but to prevent this cover-glass from shifting, 
a ring of gum-dammar varnish was run round each, and 
after a few years these preparations were examined again, 
when it was found the varnish had sucked in by capilla- 
ry attraction, and these slides, to the number of about 
thirty, were irretrievably ruined. 
Should I ever be so extremely fortunate as to obtain 
another such specimen of undoubted Stone age antiquity 
I should dry the deposit at once and mount it in Canada 
balsam.—Science Gossip. 
PERSONAL.—Henry L. Ulrich, M. D., is professor of 
Microscopy and Bacteriology in the Department of Phar- 
macy, University of Dallas, Texas. | 
