which are some delicate blue crystals from Sicily; sulphates of lime,
as gypsum, including some fine specimens of alabaster, and the fibrous
sulphate known vulgarly as tripe-stone. The visitor has now examined
the contents of the second room; the fossil tortoises and great
wingless birds; the mineral combinations--nearly all of which are
useful to man; and the way westward may be resumed to the third
department of the northern mineralogical gallery. In the wall cases of
this room are deposited some of the most interesting

FOSSIL ANIMALS.

Of these the celebrated fossil Salamander (which a German enthusiast
mistook for a fossil human skeleton), deposited in the first case,
will probably be most attractive to the general visitor. The first
three wall cases are devoted to the batrachian or Frog fossils; some
of the chelonian or Tortoise fossils; and the fossil crocodiles.
Fossil lizards are the most numerous of all fossil remains. Of these,
including the fossil crocodiles, the visitor will notice specimens in
the wall cases of this room, indicating the enormous size to which
these extinct reptiles must have grown. One, the Iguanodon (case 3)
was an animal that measured seventy feet in length. It existed in this
country; various bones of it are in this case. The remains of the
fossil Alligator, known as the mosasaurus, are also here, together
with the wealden lizard of Kent, which was about twenty-five feet in
length, and part of Cuvier's wonderful fossil Flying Lizard, or
sterodactylus, which is described as a reptile having mammalian
characteristics, a bat's wings, enormous eyes, and a bird's neck. In
the westerly cases of the room the visitor should notice the fossil
sea lizards divided into two families--the Plesiosaurus, and the
Ichthyosaurus. The plesiosaurus was an extraordinary reptile, of