BONES. 207 



before fragments of bone, whose size may not exceed 

 that of a pea or hazel-nut, and which are very fre- 

 quently met with in the bone-dust of the shops, are 

 completely disintegrated in the earth. 



In Voigtland, near Oelsnitz, in Upper Saxony, a 

 quantity of bones of the elephant and rhinoceros, and, 

 indeed, entire skeletons of such animals, were lately 

 discovered at the bottom of a clay-pit. They must 

 have lain there a very great length of time, for the 

 " oldest inhabitants " of that region cannot remember 

 to have ever noticed the elephant or rhinoceros upon 

 the plains existing in their neighborhood ; and, ac- 

 cording to the opinion of geologists, many thousands 

 of years may have passed away since the primitive 

 possessors of these bones were buried in the earth. 

 Nevertheless, even these bones contain gelatine, so 

 that antediluvian broth or old-world glue might be 

 prepared from them ; for upon being heated they 

 became black, and diffused the same ammoniacal and 

 empyreumatic odor as fresh bones. One specimen 

 yielded, upon a chemical analysis, 2J per cent, of 

 nitrogen, which answers to about 14 per cent, of 

 gelatine. Had the bones of remote antiquity the 

 same composition as those of the present day, the 

 bones in question retain nearly the half of their 

 original quantity of gelatine or nitrogen. 



Hence it may be seen how slowly the decomposi- 

 tion of bones takes place in the ground, and more par- 

 ticularly in clayey and loamy soils. We can, there- 

 fore, no longer be surprised that no action whatever 



