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No. 7. — On Remains of Struthiolithus chersonensis from North- 
ern China, with Remarks on the Distribution of Struthious 
Birds. By C. R. EAstMan. 
In the year 1857, or thereabouts, a remarkable fossil egg was discov- 
ered in the Government of Cherson, in South Russia. The circumstances 
of its being brought to light were peculiar, and its subsequent history 
is instructive enough to repay a brief recapitulation, which we give as 
follows. 
During a spring freshet, a small stream occupying an old watercourse 
excavated a hollow below a milldam near the village of Malinowka, in the 
Chersonesus. Some peasants happening by at the time observed floating 
on the surface of the pool an egg-shaped object, which they lost no time 
in capturing. A neighboring freeholder acquired the specimen, and from 
him it passed into the possession of his nephew, a man by the name of 
Dobrowolsky, who offered it for sale to various Russian institutions. 
Declined by all on account of the exorbitantly high price demanded for 
it (1,000 roubles), it was preserved in the family for over twenty-five 
years, until through a deplorable mishap it was shattered into nearly 
forty pieces. Some of the fragments, however, were obtained by Pro- 
fessor W. von Nathusius, who examined them microscopically, and 
declared that they indicated a very close relationship to the common 
ostrich.? 
But long before the destruction of this unique specimen, namely, in 
the year 1872, Professor A. Brandt of Charkow, to whom it was sub- 
mitted by the owner, had the forethought to take a plaster cast of the 
fossil, and at the same time prepared a minute description of it. We 
are indebted to him for our principal knowledge of this egg, as well as 
for the news of the fatality that ultimately overtook it.? 
1 Zoolog. Anzeiger, Vol. IX. No. 214, p. 47 (1886). 
2 Bull. de l’Acad. Imp. des Sci. St. Petersburg, Vol. XVIII. pp. 158-161 (1873) ; 
Mélanges Biol., Vol. VIII. pp. 730-735; Ibis, [3], Vol. IV. pp. 4-7 (1874); Zoolog. 
Anzeiger, Vol. VIII. No. 191, p. 191 (1885). 
VOL. XXXII. — NO. 7. 1 
