APPENDIX. 



No. I. 



ON THE STATE IN WHICH ANIMAL MATTER IS USUALLY 

 FOUND IN FOSSILS. By Mk. Alfeed Smee, Student of King's 

 College, London, and conmmnicated by Peop. Rotle, M.D., F.G.S. 

 (Proceedings of the Geological Society of London, No. 57. 1838.) 



The author first describes briefly tbe composition of those parts of 

 recent n.TiiTna.lH capable of being preserved in a fossil state; and then 

 proceeds to detail his investigations into the composition of fossil organic 

 remains. 



For the sake of arrangement, he divides fossils into two great classes, 

 one in which animal matter is present in various states, the other in which 

 it has been removed. The first class he further subdivides into three 

 cases : 1. Comprehending those fossils in which animal matter retains its 

 original condition. 2. Those in which it has been partially changed. 

 3. Those in which only the carbon of the animal matter remains. 



1. The following examples were given of the first case. 



Small portions of the tooth of a horse, of an ox, and a stag, from the 

 chalk rubble at Brighton, were submitted to the action of diluted muriatic 

 acid ; and after the earthy portions had been removed, the animal matter 

 retained the shape of the bone, was white, and of the consistence of 

 cartilage. Fragments of a tooth of a mammoth from Norfolk, and of a 

 rib of a mastodon from Big-bone-lick in Ohio, when similarly treated, 

 gave the same results. A thin slice of the rib exhibited under the 

 microscope the structure of recent bone. Fragments of a stag's rib and 

 horn, of an ox's head, and the tusk of a boar, found near the Bank of 

 England, associated with Roman implements, retained their animal matter 

 unaltered. Small portions of a Terebratula and of two species of Productae, 

 from the Silurian rocks of Malvern, were placed in very diluted muriatic 

 acid ; and when the earthy portions had been removed, small flocculi of 

 animal matter, resembling the recent membrane of a sheU, floated in the 

 solution. A minute fragment of Agwphus caudaius yielded little shreds of 

 animal matter. The experiments on the eheUs were repeated several times 

 with the same results. Under the microscope these fossils exhibited also 

 the structure of recent shells. 



2. The second case in which animal matter has been partially changed 

 was illustrated by the following experiments : — Portions of a stag's jaw 



