



















50 NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. ‘ 
LE EaG.— Yesterday one of my servants, on opening a hen’s 
egg site another egg within it. The inclosed was about the size of a 
robin’s egg, with a well-formed, slightly rough shell. It lay in the white. 
The parent egg was fully formed and was eaten. I heard of it on arriv- 
ing home, and secured the small one. It has not yet been opened. — E. L. S. 
There are two similar specimens in the Museum of the Essex Institute. 
poe cases are also mentioned as occurring in England, in Hardwicke’s 
ce Gossip, in which it states that a ‘‘communication was made last — 
year ot the Académie des Sciences of France, of a similar occurrence.”— _ 
EDITORS. 
Hasrrs OF THE E PTRD SNAKE. — A case of the common striped snake 
after a chase by crushing itin its folds 
in the boa constrictor manner, has for the first time come to my know- 

an- 
ner described of the large constrictors, except perhaps the chasna 
F. W., Newark, N. J. 

sep tae 
THE MICROSCOPE IN GroLocy.—D. Forbes, in the Popular Science 
Review, writes on this pen novel subject. After a few prefatory 
remarks upon the general advantages of the use of the Microscope in 
all 
ents of such rocks are seen to be developed as more or less perfect 
crystals, at all angles to one another,” which he infers could only take 
in a rock at one time, ‘in a state of liquidity or solution ” (aqueous 
or igneous). When “ quartz, leucite, calcite, felspar,” and other colorless 
minerals present similar appearances in thin sections, they may be d 
tinguished al “their optical properties and the use of polarized light 
by similar tests different forms of the same mineral may be separate 
and the structure, whether crystalline or vitreous, determined, and t 
alterations in eruptive rocks produced by. the action of water, the atmo: 
; or other lied. In pendant refere 
is made to the discovery by Sorby of the existence ‘tof nume: min 
” and also in volcanic aten “int ! 
felspar and nephiline ejected f from the crater of Vesuvius.” These fact 
and the farther statement that “finia vapor, gas, and stone cavities, 
common both to the volcanic quartz- -trachytes and the oldest g 


