280 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
Having thus far pointed out the errors of this “ Naturalist,” I will 
proceed to the proposition itself, which is simply this: that it is pos¬ 
sible the Icthyosaurus, and the marine animals found contemporane¬ 
ously with it in a fossil state, may at present he existing two or three 
miles under the surface of the sea. I say marine animals, because it 
is evident, without further proof, that some of the animals found con¬ 
temporaneously with it, could not exist in the sea at all. Now for a 
few simple facts; the skeleton of these animals which are found in the 
cliffs of lime in Dorsetshire, are pressed flat with the superincumbent 
weight; therefore, if their hones were not calculated to bear the pres¬ 
sure of a weight composed of at the most sixty feet of cliff superin¬ 
cumbent upon them, it necessarily follows that the pressure of 
15,840 feet of water (which is the number of feet contained in three 
miles) would crush them to atoms. Nor can they ever rise from 
that depth, because if they did so they would be liable to the distur¬ 
bance of storms, and might possibly be seen by navigators, or car¬ 
ried to the shore, of which circumstances happening there is no 
account. Besides, the position of the nostrils near the eyes shows 
that these animals were, like the whale, calculated to float on the sur¬ 
face, and spout the water through their nostrils. 
ARTICLE XVIII—ON THE PRODUCTION OF INFUSORIA. 
BY E. G. BALLARD, ESQ. 
Extracted from the Field Naturalist’s Magaxine, Vol. 2, page 146. 
I shall first examine the putrefactive process in vegetable matter. 
Without entering minutely into the chemical analysis of vegetable 
matter, which, throughout the whole vegetable kingdom, according 
to Nicholson’s Chemical Dictionary, amounts to no less than twenty- 
nine various ingredients, we may briefly observe that the following 
are universal constituents of all vegetable substances; namely, sugar; 
gum; starch; gluten; albumen; gelatine; wood ; tibrin. Of these he 
gives the following definitions:— 
Sugar. —Crystallises; soluble in water and alcohol; taste sweet; 
soluble in nitric acid, and yields oxalic acid. 
Gum. —Does not crystallis; taste insipid; soluble in water, and 
forms mucilage; insoluble in alcohol; precipitated by silicated 
potash; soluble in nitric acid, and forms mucous and oxalic acids. 
Starch. —A white powder, insoluble in cold water; taste insipid; 
soluble in hot water; opake and glutinous; precipitated by an in¬ 
fusion of nutgalls; precipitate redissolved by a heat of 120 deg. ; 
insoluble in alcohol; soluble in dilute nitric acid, and precipitated by 
alcohol; with nitric acid yields oxalic acid and a waxy matter. 
