4 
WARD’S NATURAL SCIENCE BULLETIN. 
below, and unconsciously repeating to myself, 
with such material changes as the present case 
required, the words of Genesis 28: 17. Then 1 
clambered slowly out of the great crater and sat 
down on the rim for a last long look into its 
awful depths. How I wish that yon might have 
been with me to see all these wonders. Although 
not in the line of biological science, I know that 
they would have greatly interested you. 
On the plain which intervenes between this 
crater which I have just left and the original 
greater crater’s rim, with its fumaroles, of which 
1 have before spoken, the soil (the old crater fill- 
ing) yields in the moist season of the year a crop 
of efflorescences of Boracic acid. Mr. N ’s 
miners bring up the mountain on their heads 
small, strong empty casks, with a large bung- 
hole. These casks they fill with these efflores- 
cences, bung them tightly, and send them sliding 
and rolling to the plain below. There the 
precious acid is lixiviated, recrystallized and 
sent to Glasgow. Down at the sea-side, at the 
edge of the moist plain (covered at highest tides) 
which connects Vulcano to Vulcanello, are the 
Farallones, a little group of Drongs 100 feet 
high, of volcanic conglomerates and tufas, 
strangely honey-combed from top to bottom by 
oven-shaped caverns, large and small. These 
caverns — particularly some at the sea-level and 
open to the damp sea-breezes — furnish a steady 
supply of alum and other saline efflorescences, 
which are carefully scraped off and gathered. 
On the land side of one of these largest drongs 
there is the strangest sight for a civilized observ- 
er. Every cavern, from top to bottom of the 
drong, has a door of wood or a mat curtain be- 
fore it, and is filled within by a family of human 
beings, who and their ancestors before them, 
have lived there, generation after generation, to a 
period more remote than tradition recalls. These 
are true Troglodytes who are so attached to their 
rock-cave homes that they will not live in any 
other. Mr. hi showed me a row of small 
but good white-washed buildings which he had 
offered them rent free; yet not one of them 
would leave his rock-cavern where, besides be- 
ing sadly cramped up, they suffer not a little 
from dampness and the acid emanations which 
permeate the rock, coloring tne cavern walls at 
some seasons of the year with copious efflores- 
cences of bright red, green and yellow. And 
yet these creatures, who run like marmots or 
conies into their holes and then turn around and 
look back out at you, are not beasts but are hu- 
man beings who are so far civilized as to be fair 
miners; and so christianized that they go over 
to Lipari once a year for mass and confession. 
Several times in the week that I have been 
here I have started to go to Stromboli, whose 
beautiful pillar of cloud by day and pillar of 
fire (so it looks) by night rises freshly every ten 
minutes to allure me. But I have hardly got 
settled in my boat before the wind has changed 
and my men have said ’twas useless to try the 
trip. This changing of the wind in these Aeolian 
Isles is most extraordinary. Looking the other 
day from one of the hills out on to the sea to a 
passing steamer, I saw its smoke trend to nearly 
every point of the compass while it was travelling 
but two or three miles! I can not but think that 
these many volcanic vents of the Liparis, with 
others, including Etna, on the main land, have 
their part in the phenomenon. 
Now, my dear , I will close, and bore 
you no more. The lizard has gotten into my 
bed and I must rout it out before it gets any 
darker, and I must order my usual meal of 
boiled eggs, bread, oranges and wine. 
Oh, a curious old planet is ours without doubt, 
It is curious within and is curious without ; 
It abounds in strange things that are curious to view, 
And some curious people inhabit it, too.” 
Profoundly yours, Henry A. Ward. 
Since the issue of our last Bulletin we have 
received a series of Reptiles and Fish from the 
Liassic beds of Wurtemburg. These will soon 
be stripped of their rough German frames and 
cased in walnut; among them is a perfect skele- 
ton of Ichthyosaurus campylodon eight feet long; 
another seven feet long, and a third of Ichthyos- 
aurus multiscissus six feet long. Our price for 
the first two is $100 each, and for the last $50. 
there must be experience to know what kind of 
specimens to get and what to reject; and there 
must be the necessary means to undertake all 
this; furthermore, it must be followed systemat- 
ically — in other words— as a business. It is by 
a knowledge and observance of the foregoing 
that we are enabled to offer to teachers and 
others a class of material not obtainable else- 
where, and we would call their attention to our 
three collections in in Mineralogy, each of differ- 
ent scope, which we call — indicating their range 
— the College Collection, the Academy 
Collection, and the Collection for Union 
Schools, respectively. Of these, the first is 
naturally the most complete, its 280 specimens, 
covering the ground evenly and fully, are further 
supplemented by a series of 50 crystal models 
and a set of 40 imitation precious stones, show- 
ing the principal minerals employed in jewelry. 
The specimens are all numbered to correspond 
with a printed descriptive catalogue accompany- 
ing the callection, accurately labelled, and each 
specimen mounted on a black walnut block. In 
the case of single detached crystals, these are 
similarly mounted, supported on special brass 
holders; the precious stones are in a neat case by 
themselves. This collection we supply packed, 
ready for delivery, at $250. 
In the Academy Collection the specimens 
number 180, distributed as follows: 
Elements, ,... 8 
Sulphides, etc., 14 
Chlorides and Fluorides, . 6 
Oxides 45 
Silicates, 64 
Phosphates, etc., 8 
Sulphates, 10 
Carbonates, 18 
Hydrocarbons, 10 
The classification adopted in this, as in all 
our mineral collections is that of Dana’s System 
of Mineralogy. This collection mounted same 
as the preceding, $100. 
Our Union School Collection contains 120 
good sized specimens of such minerals as every, 
well informed person should be acquainted with, 
and is not to be confounded with the fragment 
gatherings so often passing as “School Cabi- 
nets.” It is mounted in the same style as the 
previous two, and supplied complete for $50. 
While these collections are primarily intended 
for use, the fact has not been overlooked that 
beauty is not necessarily incompatible with this 
object, and hence, where it was possible to have 
the latter without sacrificing the former, we have 
sought to combine both, and can safely say that 
no more attractive ornaments for a school room 
could be chosen than these series make. 
Besides the above standard collections, we pre- 
pare others larger and smaller, arranged accord- 
ing to any system or author preferred, and at any 
price. Send for our catalogue, price 20 cents. 
PHYSICAL AND STRUCTURAL 
SERIES. 
In addition to the individual Minerals and the 
Systematic Collections above mentioned, we have 
prepared various special series of specimens to 
illustrate the Physical and Structural Properties 
of Minerals: 
Lustre, Color , Diaphaneity , Fusibility, Specific 
Gravity, Hardness, State, of Aggregation, Fracture, 
Structure. External Form. 
We also offer suites of CRYSTAL MODELS 
of various sizes, in solid glass; in plate glass 
with axes and angles shown by colored threads); 
in wood (some revolving to show combinations); 
and in plaster (white or with colored faces). 
ORGANISMS IN METEORITES. 
In the second number of the Bulletin we prom - 
ised our readers a short review of this subject, 
which has caused so much discussion for the past 
few months; we feel, however, almost as if an 
apology were due our scientific friends for seri- 
ously considering a subject on which there seems 
to be an entire unanimity of all whose opinion 
is entitled to consideration. It must be remem- 
bered, however, that the majority of people know 
but little of the nature of Meteorites, and the idea 
of life from other worlds coming to our own ap- 
peals strongly to the imagination, and mankind is 
ever anxious to believe the wonderful, as we see 
fully illustrated by the oft-repeated stories of hu- 
man bodies turned to stone, and living toads in 
solid rock, and the statement that the moons of 
Jupiter can be seen reflected in a mirror. It is 
now more than a year since Dr. Halm published 
his quarto volume with 32 plates containing over 
a hundred illustrations of sections of Meteorites 
showing the structures which he claimed were or- 
ganic. A certain Dr. Weinland examined the 
original slides and was convinced that he really 
beheld the remains of corals, sponges &c. He 
published an article in the Ausland fully endors- 
ing Dr. Hahn’s discoveries and named one of the 
supposed corals in honor of him Ilahnia meieori- 
tica. A number of scientific journals in Europe 
and our own country mentioned these facts with- 
out pointing out the error of Dr. Hahn’s conclu- 
sions; and some of them— even so good a journal 
as the Popular Science Monthly — published articles 
fully accepting them as correct. The editors were 
probably not aware that this same Dr. Hahn once 
got up a series of plates of what he described as 
Silurian fossils from Canada, the same having- 
been discovered in flints from the Chalk of Eng- 
land which were brought to Montreal as ballast. 
Although experts on this question have been in- 
terviewed and unite in stating that the structures 
referred to are crystallographic and not organic, 
the general newspapers still keep up the discus- 
sion doubtless, partly through ignorance and 
partly from a love of the sensational. 
A statement was made in one of the August 
numbers (1881) of Science that Darwin had exam- 
ined Dr. Hahn’s slides and expressed his belief 
in their organic nature in very un-Darwinian 
terms. The statement copied, as we understand, 
from a German paper, bore the evidence of falsity 
on the face of it, and was doubtless a pure inven- 
tion. Dr. J. Lawrence Smith says: “although I 
have probably examined more microscopic plates 
of fragments of meteorites than any other person, 
still I have never discovered anything like organic 
remains in any of them. Besides, the well-known 
chemical composition of these bodies is averse to 
the existence of any such remains as spoken of by 
Dr. Hahn. * * * In the microscopic exami- 
nation of these polished plates of meteorites the 
two predominating minerals, Enstatite and Bron- 
zite, will by their fissures and forms sometimes 
remind one of vegetable and other organic forms; 
but the merest tyro of an observer will trace here 
nothing but a rare resemblance. And, further- 
more the -very nature of these minerals precludes 
the possibility of organic remains even in terres- 
trial minerals of similar kind.” Prof. Hawes of 
the Smithsonian Institution in a letter to Dr. 
Smith says: “I have read that paper of Dr. 
Hahn’s. He is a kind of half-insane man whose 
imagination has run wild with him. These forms 
which he so accurately describes and figures have 
long been known to exist in meteorites, and have 
been frequently described by mineralogists and 
microscopists. They are mainly composed of 
Enstatite and Brouzite in radial form and frac- 
ture in such a peculiar manner as to give them the 
appearance of structure.” 
These statements, coming as they do from the 
highest authority, and endorsed, so far as we are 
aware, by everyone who has made a specialty of 
the subject ought surely to be sufficient to lay the 
question on the table until called up by some one 
whose scientific standing entitles him to a re- 
spectful hearing. 
We have had a series of slides made from the 
Knyahinya meteorite — one whiqh Dr. Hahn 
calls especial attention to — and they have been 
examined by a number of scientific men. They 
all exhibit the objects described by Dr. Hahn; 
