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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
hours, care being taken to cover the washing-tub with a closely-fitting 
wooden lid ; by this means the linen is readily cleansed, requires hardly any 
rubbing, and less brushing, and there is a saving also of time and fuel. 
Ammonia does not affect the linen nor woollen goods, and is largely used as 
washing-liquor in the North of England, of course along with much water, 
as above indicated. 
GEOLOGY AND PALAEONTOLOGY. 
Fossil Turtles . — At the meeting of the American Philosophical Society, 
March 1, 1872, Professor Cope read a paper ‘‘On Protostegci ,” a genus of 
extinct Testudinata. A detailed account of the osteology of P. gigas from the 
cretaceous beds was given, by which it appeared that the genus had separate 
ribs, as in Sphargis , and that the carapace was formed by large radiating 
plates of bone in the skin. Two other species were described — P. tuberosus 
and P. neptunus. The latter, the largest known marine turtle, from New 
Jersey ; the former/ from the cretaceous of Mississippi, had been referred by 
Leidy to the Mosasauroids. 
Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins' efforts in New York have, we regret to learn, 
been completely overthrown by an ignorant manager of the Central Park 
Museum. In answer to an inquiry made of him, Mr. Hawkins says that 
all he had done during twenty-one months to restore the skeletons 
of the extinct animals of America (of the Hadrosaurus, and the other 
gigantic animal, which was thirty-nine feet long), was destroyed by order of 
Mr. Henry Hilton, on May 3, with sledge-hammer, and carted away to Mount 
St. Vincent, where the remains were buried several feet below the surface. 
The preparatory sketches of other animals, including a mammoth and a 
mammoth and a mastodon, and the moulds and sketch-models, were de- 
stroyed. Mr. Hilton did this, said Mr. Hawkins, out of ignorance, just as 
he had a coat of white paint put on the skeleton of a whale which Mr. 
Peter Cooper had presented to the Museum, and just as he had a bronze 
statue painted white. Mr. Hilton told the celebrated naturalist who had 
come from England to undertake the work that he should not bother him- 
self with “dead animals;” that there was plenty to do among the living. 
This illustrates the policy of having such men as Hilton at the head of one 
of the most important departments of the City government. When the 
skeletons were dug up again, by order of Colonel Stebbins, they were found 
broken in thousands of pieces. Prof. Henry, of the Smithsonian Institu- 
tion, when he heard of this piece of barbarism, would not believe it. “Why,” 
he exclaimed, “I would have paid them a good price for it.” Mr. Hilton, 
however, preferred to destroy the work of the naturalist, which had cost the 
city at least 12,000 dollars. 
Flint Arrow-heads. — We beg to recommend our readers to an excellent 
article on these weapons, which appears in the “American Naturalist” for 
April. It is certainly the ablest paper on this subject that we have seen, 
and it is abundantly illustrated. 
New Species of Cretaceous Birds . — A very able paper on this subject 
appears in “ Silliman’s American Journal ” for May, by Mr. 0. C. Marsh. 
The few remains of birds hitherto described from the cretaceous deposits of 
