Page:Science vol. 5.djvu/82

 �has a little building to himself, where he is cODstaDtly emplojed in making rostorations and casta of novelties, which are distributed with great liberality.

Only favored visitors go to the basement, or care to go. The public entrance is above, opening underneath a inagiiificent rose-window iato a. spacions court with tiled floor, and walls of variegated bricks. This region is garnished by great slabs of the celebrated foolpriut sandstones from the Connecticut valley, and a

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tiou. This might be expected, considering the J men — Dana, Silliman. Brush, and others— of whose labors it is the result.

To mention bulf of the notable minerals 1 here, would exhaust the space set apart for the | whole of this article. There were formerly sev- ] cral thousand dollars' worth of diamonds ia | one of the cases ; but on account of their theft, though they were nflerwards recovered, the 1 labels now state that the present specimens I are gloss facsimiles. The only thing in this J

���huge stump taken entire from a coal-bed. Iron staircases, chnging to the wall in spiral flight, lead to the top story, and the conrt is loofed with glass.

On the right and left of the entrance ni'e doors leading to bnsiness offices, the blow-pipe laboratory, and the lecture-rooms of the I'ro- fessors Dana (father and son), where large audiences frequently gather to hear the insiiuc- tion designed for undergraduates alone ; and in the rear of the com1:, on the ground-floor, is the exhibition hall for minerals, of which the 1 possesses an almost unrivalled collec-

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��room not locked up is a meteorite weighing sixteen hundred pounds. The metal in one spot has been sawed olT, and polished until it looks like burnished steel, and has been en- graved with an historical inscription, from which it appears that this meteorite fell in Texas, presumably the only slate in the Union lai^e enough to receive it safely. In an adjoining case are a peck or so of small meteorites. picked up within a narrow area of Iowa, and of suitable size to be rained down upon a more thickly settled rt^ion.

After the brilliant and many tinted ores, the endless variety and beauty of the quartz erys-

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