and a combination of chloride of
calcium with phosphate of lime. These combinations, however, cannot
interest the general visitor.

The case marked 58 contains the varieties of Fluorides, or
combinations of fluorine and the metals. These include the fluoride of
calcium, of which the most familiar variety to Englishmen is that
known as Derbyshire spar, of which many useful articles are
manufactured in this country. Ladies particularly will halt with
interest before the case marked 58 A, where the fluorides, better
known as the topaz, are deposited. These include a fine series of
crystals from the Brazils, Siberia, and Saxony.

The 59th case is covered with Chlorides, or combinations of chlorine
with other substances, including rock salt, or chloride of sodium;
sal-ammoniac from Vesuvius; fine chloride of copper, exhibiting
beautiful crystals; and chlorides of silver and mercury. The two last
cases in the room (60 and 60 A) contain samples of coal, bitumen,
resins, and salts. Here will be found the honey-stone of Thuringia;
crystals of phosphate of magnesia and ammonia called struvite;
beautiful specimens of amber, some pieces of which inclose insects;
and copal, also containing insects; fossil copal; mineral pitch, from
naphtha to asphalt; the elastic bitumen of Derbyshire, exhibiting its
different degrees of softness; Humboldt's dapeche, an inflammable
fossil of South America; and brown and black coal. Having noticed all
these varieties, the visitor should advance at once westward into the
second room of the mineralogical gallery.

Here, against the southern wall, are groups of

FOSSIL ANIMALS

ranged inside and upon the top of the wall cases. The most remarkable
of the remains inclosed in the wall cases of this room are the remains
of the carapace and other portions of the gigantic Fossil Tortoise
from the Sewalik Hills, Bengal, discovered by the enterprising Major
Cautley; and the gigantic fossil bones of an extinct genus of birds
that inhabited New Zealand in the remote past. But these wall cases
are mainly devoted to the exhibition of chelonian, or tortoise
fossils, which are the highest class of fossil reptiles, except the
serpents, and found only in the later or oolite formations of the
earth. The regularity with which the various families of reptiles are
discovered in the earth's strata, according to their order, is
remarkable. First the Lizards are found in the magnesian limestone,
immediately above the